This week: habitat conservation
One of the misconceptions about vets is that we know everything science has to offer about animals in general, at least the warm-blooded varieties. The animal kingdom is so large that there are many specialised fields. So even though I have dealt with animals every day for more than 10 years, I am still constantly learning about animal matters far afield from my world of small-animal medicine. One of my hobbies is to keep abreast of new scientific findings, not only in veterinary medicine but also in other fields of animal, plant and environmental science. It helps me put my knowledge into perspective, not to mention satisfy the childhood curiosity that led me along the road of science to my vocation.
Everyone has heard about the extinction of the dinosaurs, and some more zoologically minded readers may know there have been other major but not so famous extinction episodes in the past. One that comes to mind is the loss of all the trilobites that once dominated the world before the age of the dinosaurs. These events are still a mystery to science but we can safely say they were the result of natural disasters of some sort.
What is astonishing and horrifying is the new extinction episodes we are facing now. A study by the Zoological Society of London reports that since the 1970s, humans have been responsible for the extinction of a quarter to a third of the world's wildlife. Populations of land-based species have fallen by 25 per cent, marine by 28 per cent and freshwater by 29 per cent, the study says. We are killing 1 per cent of all species annually. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that at this rate, biodiversity is going to be dangerously low in a few decades.
The world's wildlife has always lived harmoniously in a natural equilibrium, with a sufficient buffer to survive most disasters. The secret to this buffer is biodiversity. It is this diversity of animal species that prevents any one pest species from dominating and destroying the environment.
For humans, the loss of biodiversity means the loss of potentially life-saving medicines, an increase in pests affecting our food supply, deterioration in water quality and supply and a world that is more susceptible to the adverse affects of global warming and other natural disasters. The arrogance of humans has led to the deaths of billions of animals. How will we be judged by future generations? As decadent, greedy and short-sighted, I would guess.