Conservation Concept: Extinction Panic Explained
What's the deal with extinction rates?
Since we've started tracking species populations, we've noticed an alarming trend: an increase in extinctions, and proliferation of newly threatened species. Conservation organizations are quick to point out threats to charismatic megafauna like pandas and rhinos, but habitat loss and species loss have indiscriminate widespread impacts to the point where some are calling the current losses part of a mass extinction event... something that has occurred only five other times in Earth's 4.5 billion year history.
What exactly is mass extinction? Let's dig into how scientists think about extinctions and how what we are experiencing today stacks up against previously documented worldwide extinctions.