Mass Extinction Research Paper

The 6th Mass Extinction? Species of animals and plants go extinct all the time due to their lack of evolutionary ‘fitness’, for example, the giant panda is on the brink of extinction because it can only eat one food, and can only copulate a couple weeks out of the year, but sometimes, It 's not their fault… a mass extinction is “the extinction of a large number of species within a relatively short period of time, as between the Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods when three-quarters of all species on Earth, including most dinosaurs, became extinct” (“Mass Extinction”). Planet Earth is on the brink of a 6th mass extinction because of humans contributions to climate change, poaching, and deforestation.
Climate change due to human’s effect on planet …show more content…
In the article “Animals Under Siege”, the author states that “tropical forests are home to the greatest concentration of biodiversity on the planet.” If these forests are the most densely packed areas of life, they should therefore be the most protected areas in the world, but that is not the case. For example, the growing human population is threatening 32% of all amphibian species in the world (“amphibian extinctions”). The amount of land dedicated to crops for human and livestock consumption will grow exponentially with the population, putting forest dwelling creatures at risk of extinction. If human population reaches a point in which there are too many mouths to feed and not enough room to grow food, these life-enriched forests will suffer. In the article “Mass Plant Extinctions Show The Threats From Human Exploitations”, Jowit explained that “nearly ⅔ of all threatened plant species live in tropical rainforests”. This statistic further explains the need to protect these harborers of life. To summarize, deforestation needs to be acted upon today to save our most biodiverse locations on