WHERE’S NOAH WHEN YOU NEED HIM?
on Sep 12 2007 at 6:20 pm | Filed under: China eco-city, extinction, gorillas
The sad & bad news first. In the big picture, there’s the profoundly disturbing report on today’s BBC site entitled “Gorillas head race to extinction.” I took a journalism course and I think that’s a bit misleading. It’s not like the gorillas are racing to extinction. Rather they’re being dragged there.
Anyway, the gorillas have been recategorized from “endangered” to “critically endangered.” That means their numbers have “declined by more than 60% over the last 20-25 years.”
Forest clearance has allowed hunters access to previously inaccessible areas; and the Ebola virus has followed, wiping out one-third of the total gorilla population in protected areas, and up to 95% in some regions.
Ebola has moved through the western lowland gorilla’s rangelands in western central Africa from the southwest to the northeast. If it continues its march, it will reach all the remaining populations within a decade.
The Sumatran orangutan was already Critically Endangered before this assessment, with numbers having fallen by 80% in the last 75 years … In Borneo, home to the second orangutan species, palm oil plantations have expanded 10-fold in a decade, and now take up 27,000 sq km of the island. Illegal logging reduces habitat still further, while another threat comes from hunting for food and the illegal international pet trade.
But, as it turns out, we’re not just driving the gorillas to death, its one species after another. The numbers of species in deep trouble boggles the mind:
One in three amphibians, one in four mammals, one in eight birds and 70% of plants so far assessed are believed to be at risk of extinction, with human alteration of their habitat the single biggest cause.
The tone of this year’s Red List is depressingly familiar. Of 41,415 species assessed, 16,306 are threatened with extinction to a greater or lesser degree.
Yo Noah, where are you when we need you?
Two by two by 16,306. We’re talking the mother of all boats. We used to call her Mother Earth.
OK, I can’t leave us in this place. How about some good news.
The Chinese, who have receiving much abuse for doing in the last 30 years what we in the western world have been doing non-stop since the Industrial Revolution, have come up with a new idea for the modern eco-city.
Share ThisChina will start building the country’s first eco-city in the new year and plans four other radical new urban developments as it seeks to tackle pollution, the head of the firm designing the projects said on Saturday.
Peter Head, Director of engineering firm Arup, said they will not need subsidies to make money because developers spend less on infrastructure and have been given generous land use rights on the crowded east coast where real estate is at a premium.
The firm expects construction to start in early 2008 at Dongtan, a development on an island outside Shanghai where all energy will be renewable, no gasoline-fueled cars permitted and farms will grow organic vegetables for local consumption.