Populations of marine mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have declined by 49% since 1970, a report says.
The study says some species people rely on for food are faring even worse, noting a 74% drop in the populations of tuna and mackerel.
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Killing the Planet
Something we furless primates seem to be bent on doing.
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we are so frelled
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Another BBC webpage is more to the point of why this is happening
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34011026
"Humans' status as a unique super-predator is laid bare in a new study published in Science magazine.
The analysis of global data details the ruthlessness of our hunting practices and the impacts we have on prey.
It shows how humans typically take out adult fish populations at 14 times the rate that marine animals do themselves.
And on land, we kill top carnivores, such as bears, wolves and lions, at nine times their own self-predation rate.
But perhaps the most striking observation, say authors Chris Darimont and colleagues, is the way human beings focus so heavily on taking down adult prey.
This is quite different from the rest of the animal kingdom, for which the juveniles of a species tend to be the most exploited.
Part of this is explained by the tools that human hunters exclusively can deploy.
We can tackle adult prey at minimal cost, and so gain maximum, short-term reward..."
And in killing adults, we kill the means of production....
That's part of why I hold that trophy hunting is evil. The hunters kill the fittest animals in a species.
The pattern was set once the atlatl had been invented some 40,000 years ago.
H. sapiens wiped out the land-based megafauna within a thousand years of our arrival on each continent. Really, we're total slackers when in comes to the oceans.
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