Change is coming whether we like it or not. People have plundered the Earth’s web of life for many hundreds of years to satisfy their greed. We are living in a moral vacuum, only believing in our own manipulations and no longer perceive the reality of what it means to be human on this Earth. […]
overfishing
Chinese paddlefish – Extinct 2010
The Chinese paddlefish is now extinct. It existed before flowering plants, bamboo and the pandas. It reached three metres in length. They could weigh up to 300kg and managed to survive the 5th mass extinction of life on Earth that occurred 66 million years ago. The Chinese paddlefish and its ancestors had been around for 150 million years
Caribbean Monk Seal – Extinct 1952
The Caribbean Monk Seal was also known as the West Indian Monk Seal or Sea Wolf. The first Europeans to see them in August 1494 were Christopher Columbus and his crew when their ship laid anchor off the island of Alta Velo. Their population size, prior to exploitation by Europeans and overfishing, as at the early 17th Century has been estimated at something over a quarter of a million distributed over 13 breeding colonies each 300km apart.