Mass Species Extinction

“A majority of the nation’s biologists are convinced that a “mass extinction” of plants and animals is underway that poses a major threat to humans in the next century, yet most Americans are only dimly aware of the problem, a poll says.

The rapid disappearance of species was ranked as one of the planet’s gravest environmental worries, surpassing pollution, global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer, according to the survey of 400 scientists commissioned by New York’s American Museum of Natural History.”

Joby Warrick, Staff Writer
Washington Post, April 21, 1998

From What A Way To Go:
“Currently we are driving species to extinction probably a thousand times faster than they should be. We will lose somewhere between a quarter, maybe as many as half, of all the species on earth within the next century.”