Talk:Aequalitas et Aequitas (Map Game)/@comment-26247925-20170301205436

MAJOR EXTINCTION OF PLANT AND ANIMAL WILDLIFE

By the end of this decade, many well-known animal species are going extinct, or have declined in such numbers that only those in captivity are now remaining.

Off the eastern coast of Australia one of the world's greatest natural wonders – the Great Barrier Reef – has been almost completely destroyed, with less than 2% of coral remaining.* Rising levels of greenhouse gases have made the water too acidic for calcium-based organisms to grow.* Dumping of dredged sediment to help create the world's largest coal port has caused further damage.* Most of the colourful fish for which the reef is famous have also disappeared. On land, 50% of the continent's 400 butterfly species have died out, as well as numerous reptiles including Boyd's forest dragon, a rare and colourful lizard.

In Europe, an astonishing 50% of amphibians have disappeared due to pollution, disease and loss of habitat including many previously common species of frogs, toads, salamanders, newts and caecilians.* More than 20% of bird species have been lost, and around 15% of plants.

In South Africa's Kruger national park, a major conservation area, nearly 60% of the species under its protection have been lost. In the same region, 35% of proteaceae flowering plants have disappeared including the country's national flower, the King Protea.*

In South America, nearly half of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed, with more than 2,000 native tree species becoming extinct.

In Mexico, nearly 30% of animal species are either extinct, or critically endangered.

In Southeast Asia, the Indian elephant is on the brink of extinction. Once a common sight in this part of the world, it has declined in huge numbers due to poaching for the ivory of its tusks, loss of habitat, and human conflict.

In the Arctic, nearly 70% of polar bears have disappeared due to the shrinking of summer ice caused by global warming. By 2080 they will disappear from Greenland entirely, and from the northern Canadian coast, leaving only dwindling numbers in the interior Arctic archipelago.

Many other well-known species of fish, bird and mammal become critically endangered around this time.

This period is often referred to as the Holocene extinction event. As a direct result of human influences, the rate of species extinctions this century is between 100 and 1000 times the natural "background" or average extinction rates in the evolutionary time scale of Earth.