Currently, every animal taxon is at risk of losing a major amount of species including reptiles, plants, mammals, invertebrates, fish, birds, cephalopods, and amphibians. In the immediate future they all face losing a large percentage of their group’s diversity.
Normally, the loss 500 vertebrate species would occur over a span of 10,000 years, this amount of species, however, has been lost in just the last 100 years. At least 50 percent of the world’s primate species, our closest animal relatives, are at risk of extinction as their rainforest habitat is quickly disappearing. Scientists now predict that more than 1 million animal species are likely to become extinct in the coming decades.
With each extinction a world of possibility is forever lost. Our fellow living creatures offer us innumerable benefits. In addition to the direct loss, the extinction of a species also has effects that reverberate throughout the entire eco-system. Maintaining existing biodiversity makes essential contributions possible including pollination, seed spreading, pest regulation, nutrient cycling, erosion control, habitat engineering, carbon sequestration, and a balance between predators and prey all stabilize our environment, and enable an ecosystem essential for the health of our planet.
Many scientists believe that the non-human life that we currently know of barely makes up 10 to 20 percent of all living things. Among the millions of species as of yet unknown to humans there may be thousands of vital substances which could cure human illnesses or give us important information towards developing such cures, or otherwise solve human problems, contribute to human innovation, and deepen our understanding and appreciation of our world.
Advanced technology is at least making it possible to discover far more of the diversity of life on planet earth than ever before. Using advanced imaging and microscopy, robotic technologies, remote sensing tools, DNA Sequencing, Genomics; and also Metagenomics (the study of genetic material directly from environmental samples such as soil, water, or air) and other cutting edge technologies, humans are discovering about 18,000 new species each year.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to identify uncatalogued lifeforms, 80 to 90 percent of them are likely to become extinct before we even learn they exist.
This is a tragedy. Like the non-human life that we know, these undiscovered life forms most certainly play key roles contributing to our planet’s environmental stability and the ways they could potentially contribute to human progress are vast. But perhaps the greatest tragedy which such massive extinction represents is the loss of so many unique sensory systems — ways for the universe to experience itself that will forever be gone.