Before I end...
..also, I'm going to hop on my paleontological soap box for a moment and say that within the earth's history, within the geological record, there have been times when more than 70 percent of the known species have disappeared from the record. These are the so-called mass extinctions of course that we're all very familiar with today. A more recent dimension of the study of mass extinctions has been the study of the recovery from mass extinctions, so the recovery of biological diversity. And we're beginning to understand this a bit for the more traumatic extinctions. We know that biological diversity, of course, does recover, but it takes time, it takes geological time. The level or the diversity of the species require millions of years to return to former levels of diversity that they were at prior to the extinctions.
This also requires that the ecological crisis conditions of the extinction either relax and things return somewhat to the way they were before the extinction, or they at least stabilize, so that species then have a stable long term environment in which to adapt. This is really important when we think about the impact that we're having on biological diversity today. We cannot expect the consequences of our actions to really be reversed any time soon. And if we expect them to be stabilized at least any time in the future, I think that action has to be taken as soon as possible because our utilization is becoming more and more complete, I think. So we at least have to become aware and conscientious of our utilization of these resources.
This is a logo. Also, at this website you can find a lot of information about our project. Thank you.
|
Narrative Index
BioForum Index
