Photo credit: pixie_bebe

If the ice continues to shrink (due to man-made climate change) at its current pace the Emperor Penguins will become extinct within 100 years, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts warns.

“Emperor Penguins are one of only two open-sea Antarctic penguin species and depend on the sea ice for survival. After breeding, Emperor Penguins feed among the coastal pack ice where stretches of water are exposed. As a result of disappearing ice, the Emperor Penguins are being forced to retreat inward and could easily become displaced by other animals, losing out on nesting space.

After examining data from the Terre Adelie penguin colony, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts found the Emperor Penguin population is facing a quasi-extinction, equal to a 95 percent or more population drop by the year 2100. The population is expected to decline from 6000 breeding pairs to only 400 pairs in the next 100 years if sea ice continues to shrink at the rate projected by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) models.”

It seems that the penguins can’t adapt to changing conditions and climate, by altering the timing of their breeding cycle for example. “Unlike some other Antarctic bird species that have altered their life cycles, penguins don’t catch on so quickly,” Stephanie Jenouvrier said. “They are long-lived organisms, so they adapt slowly. This is a problem because the climate is changing very fast.”

According to a newly released report by the IUCN Primate Specialist Group says that “almost 50 percent of the world’s primates are in danger of extinction.” The report points out that habitat destruction and hunting are the two main threats.

“We’ve raised concerns for years about primates being in peril, but now we have solid data to show the situation is far more severe than we imagined,” said Russell A. Mittermeier, president of Conservation International (CI) and the longtime chairman of the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Primate Specialist Group. “Tropical forest destruction has always been the main cause, but now it appears that hunting is just as serious a threat in some areas, even where the habitat is still quite intact. In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction.”

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Soil covers most of the surface of the Earth’s land. It occurred after the erosion of rocks, due to strong winds, water, ice and due to the activity of living organisms. Soil is usually suitable for plants and small organisms to grow and live. However, human activities have altered the natural soil environment of many areas, making it hostile to organisms.

Humanity deposits many toxic substances under the ground. Most of those are radioactive materials, pesticides, heavy metals and other kind of poisonous wastes. Even if they are first deposited in lakes, rivers or the sea, waters transfer most of them in the soil, when the latter absorbs water. It happens the other way round as well, as chemicals within soil are transferred with the rain into marine ecosystems.

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It wasn’t long ago since the Caribbean monk seal was officially listed as extinct by the US Government. And now the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, reports that the Northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is “on the brink of extinction“.

According to older reports the only remaining population of Northern white rhino is restricted in the wild to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The population was 30 in April 2003 but was reduced due to poaching to only four confirmed animals by August 2006. Now in 2008 the IUCN haven’t been able to find any Northern white rhinos at all.

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The Caribbean monk seal has gone “the way of the dodo” and been officially listed as extinct by the US Government. The Caribbean monk seal is, so far, the only seal species to go extinct due to human causes.

“Humans left the Caribbean monk seal population unsustainable after overhunting them, Unfortunately, this led to their demise and labels the species as the only seal to go extinct from human causes.”

The last time anyone sighted the Caribbean monk seal was in 1952, over 50 years ago, at Seranilla Bank, between Jamaica and the Yucatan Peninsula. In 1967 the USA listed the species as endangered due to human activities.

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