Going extinct

Even as a deal to protect the world's biodiversity remained elusive in the closing hours of crucial UN talks as a typhoon approached the conference centre in Nagoya, a new study has warned that one-fifth of species face extinction.

The study, published in the October 28 issue of Science, says that the number of threatened species has grown dramatically in the past four decades, exceeding the normal "background rate" of extinction by a factor of two or three. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species currently lists 25,780 vertebrates as threatened, and an average of 52 species become more threatened (based on the IUCN's categories of risk) every year.

There is small amount of good news accompanying this study: The wide range of conservation efforts around the world has actually slowed this rate of extinction.

But current conservation efforts are far from adequate. According to a second study, also presented at the conference and published in the same issue of Science, the world would need to spend 10 times as much as it currently does on conservation in order to halt the pending extinction of many species.

If species are dying out, it is an indication of the long-term health of our own species, and we need to be aware of the impact we are having on our own ecosystem.