While a study published last week about the sixth mass extinction is still spreading across the internet, scientists and conservationists are urging the public to redirect their efforts from the study’s fear-mongering media hype towards a more productive focus on active conservation changes.
Is The Sixth Mass Extinction a Myth?
As social media continues to fan the flames of our impending self-destruction in the “sixth mass extinction,” the much-sensationalized study is drawing criticism from the scientific community. The study was co-published in Science Advances by Gerardo Ceballos and Paul Ehrlich.
Ehrlich’s credentials should not be discredited as he is well-known in the scientific community. However, he has also been dubbed the Doomsday Prophet Professors by some for his incredulous cataclysmic warnings of certain doom, all of which have been, so far, false.
The new study concludes that with current estimates, there has been “an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity” that proves the sixth mass extinction isn’t just coming, it’s already upon us.
Study Findings and Dissent from the Scientific Community
While the study isn’t inaccurate, scientists and researchers want the public to know there is a sixth mass extinction underway. However, this event, called the Holocene extinction has been happening for the past 12,000 years. Yes, we are in the sixth mass extinction. Yes, many thousands of species have been eliminated (between 20,000 to over hundreds of thousands). But no, it’s not the time to give up all hope and accept the cruel fate we have thrown upon ourselves.
The study pins humans as the primary cause for the extinction with the researchers estimating that the extinction count is at 477 species over the last 10,000 years. Ehrlich says this rate of species extinction is the highest ever in 65 million years.
Some researchers dissent from this finding, including mass extinction expert Seth Finnegan.
“This study doesn’t take the inferential approach. They are tallying up well-documented, well-observed extinctions of mammals,” says Finnegan, assistant professor in the integrative biology department at UC Berkeley.
Don’t Lose Hope! Alleviating the Sixth Mass Extinction Damage through Conservation Efforts
Many news sources have cited the study as evidence that we currently in the sixth mass extinction, which has started and is being increasingly exacerbated by human existence. With thousands of species being threatened within these reports of mass extinction, the public response has been one of generalized fear and hopelessness, which is precisely the opposite of what scientists are urging us to do with this recently highlighted information.
The study also concluded that it “is still possible through intensified conservation efforts” to slow down the rate at which the extinction is moving. Rather than rely on the fatalistic terms of Erhlich, who insisted we are “sawing off the limbs that we are sitting on,” we can apply the knowledge gleaned from the study to focus on how we can improve our situation as recommended by a world leader in present-day extinctions.
Dr. Stuart L. Pimm suggests that conservationists should not be doomsayers, but instead should spend time using the very innovations that garnered the fear-mongering results to prevent extinctions. In a study published last year, Pimm offers a different view of the current mass extinction that focuses on protecting nature and providing suggestions to diminish its effects.
Rather than accept our doomed fate as one of extinction, with concentrated, real conservation efforts, we can alleviate the effects of the sixth mass extinction, bringing hope to the world rather than casting a dim shadow on our lives.
