海角大神

This planet has entered a new period of mass extinction and human beings are chiefly to blame, a new study says.

But these same scientists say that there is a path that will avoid a true sixth mass extinction by employing aggressive conservation efforts.聽

鈥淭his will require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species and to alleviate pressures on their populations 鈥� notably habitat loss, overexploitation for economic gain, and climate change,鈥� 聽the聽researchers from the universities of Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley said in a report.聽But, they note, that this window of opportunity rapidly closing.

The activities precipitating the collapse of many species and ecosystems are related to human population size and growth which increases consumption and economic inequity.

According to the researchers, if the currently elevated extinction pace persists, humanity will soon (in as little as three human lifetimes) be deprived of many biodiversity benefits. This means that the Earth's ecosystem is likely to lose much of its ability to provide important life-support systems, from pollinating crops to cleaning and recirculating air and water

During the past century, industrialization has meant humanity has burned through eons worth of fossilized sunshine,聽changing the climate聽for all species. According to the聽Scientific American, humans use more than half of the planet鈥檚 land for cities, logging, or food, eliminating the habitats of other animals and plants.

To prevent the sixth mass extinction, one strategy being considered is聽moving threatened species of plants and animals into more sustainable environments could help them cope with changing climate,聽reports the Scientific American.

While the history of introducing new species into new habitats is peppered with mistakes, there have also been successes.

And biologists have found ways to revive threatened species. In recent decades, for example,聽scientists have brought the black-footed ferret back from just seven individuals to聽4,800 new ferrets.

Scientists in the new extinction study also聽warn that humans could be among the threatened species because in the aftermath of past mass extinctions, the ecosystem took hundreds of thousands to millions of years to rediversify. "If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover and our species itself would likely disappear early on," wrote the lead author, Gerardo Ceballos.

This study, follows another recent study published in the journal Science which concluded that the current species extinction rates are 10 to 100 times faster than previous estimates.聽