London: The Earth could soon reach a point when the mass extinction of species turns into an irreversible spiral of decline, according to a leading ecologist. Writing in The Independent, Professor Ed Wilson, a biodiversity expert at Harvard University, said the extinction rate of species was between 100 and 1,000 times higher than in pre-human times.
At this rate, the Earth is on course to lose half of all animals and plants by the end of the century. “We’re making a lonely planet. More than that, if we continue to destroy the biosphere it becomes a very dangerous planet,” Professor Wilson said, according to the newspaper.
Prof. Wilson has spent a lifetime studying rainforests and other habitats. “If you wiped out enough species, all of those say in South America, then that may be a tipping point where you get enough changes globally to begin a downward spiral,” Prof. Wilson said.
“A tipping point will come, but we don’t know when. However, the important thing is that it will come, and maybe sooner than we thought if we continue to destroy the natural habitat, and in particular the species,” he said.
“You can rehabilitate a damaged habitat to some extent, but you can’t do that if you have gotten rid of species. We would lose them forever, and I think that would be a tipping point in human existence,” he added.
On his recent visit to the UK, Prof. Wilson, 85, broke ground on a £30-m construction project on the Isle of Portland to commemorate the 460 species that are known to have gone extinct in the past 500 years, from the dodo to the Tasmanian devil. “We need a moral decision to stop species extinction, and that should be made to include the stopping of the destruction of the biosphere,” he said.
