The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Extinction at Its Best While one tends to have the general idea as to what’s happening around the world, it isn’t until someone comes around and tells you exactly what’s going on that you become truly aware. This thought was the first to cross my mind while I was reading The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert. Before getting into the details of this book review, I would like to preface it by saying that before beginning this class I had an idea of what was happening around the globe. I was not so uninformed as to say that I didn’t know the climate was changing and species were gradually disappearing, but rather I was unaware as to just how quickly this was taking place. I can say that in the back of my mind there has …show more content…
In chapter 11, she quoted the book The World of Life saying that “I am convinced that…the rapidity of extinction of so many large Mammalia is actually due to man’s agency.” (pg. 229) and I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. This quote of course is referring to the large mammals of the modern age and the Megafauna of the past, but in reality it goes well past that. Thinking about the actions of humanity, look at the evidence presented and the effects of them. Either, directly or indirectly, humanity is responsible for a widespread elimination of species. Through the means of trading and transportation, invasive species have spread across the globe and inserted themselves into ecosystems where they don’t belong, like Kolbert’s rats that she keeps talking about, the white fungus that killed millions of North American bats, Zebra Mussels killing fish, and the direct actions being our hunting birds and other animals to extinction and cutting down acres of rainforests destroying the habitats of hundreds of species. The big picture here being this: we did it, we finally proved we’re the greatest. All it took was killing off so many species because it’s more important to fuel our expansion and maintain our lifestyle than to maintain a proper balance in the world. All I can say is that it saddens me, it …show more content…
So who cares if a bird or two goes extinct? Or an elephant? Or a bug? To most people it doesn’t really matter. But species extinction is a great moral wrong. Every species has a role in its ecosystem and by intruding on the natural balance of things and thus causing the early extinction of species we are throwing the natural balance out of whack and reducing biodiversity. Biodiversity is key in surviving ecological hardship. When difficult situations arise, it is up to species to adapt and evolve to overcome. By intervening and accelerating the hardship of not just one species, but entire ecosystems, we are creating so much stress of the species present that they simply cannot adapt or evolve quick enough in such a short span of time. Thus, human actions are directly responsible for the extinction of many species, which directly correlates to a decrease in genetic and biodiversity. It is hard to deny that we rely on, and take for granted, all of the species and their roles in their ecosystem and how they keep things afloat. And by irreparably damaging these systems, we are directly relating to our ability to gather supplies such as food sources and lumber and agriculture in the future. Thus it falls upon humanity to act accordingly to try and prevent the damage we will cause if we continue “business as usual” in the