Is the sixth mass extinction coming?

Does the current anthropogenic biodiversity crisis really qualify as a mass extinction?

Many people now uncritically accept the reality of a sixth mass extinction, but others contend that this is an unrealistic exaggeration by environmental alarmists.

The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of threatened species contains nearly 140,000 well-documented species, of which 900 have already gone extinct since the year 1500 (Fig. 1) and almost 80 are extinct in the wild.

The current human-driven biodiversity crisis still does not qualify for a mass extinction in terms of the percentage of extinct species yet, but the current rates of biodiversity loss actually fit within the range of the five major mass extinctions during the Phanerozoic.

The magnitude and the high extinction rates of the current biodiversity crisis seem to have led to an obsession for conserving every living species. However, this is contrary to the natural evolutionary process. Stopping extinction is nonsensical in evolutionary terms and is as unnatural as accelerating it.

Read the full story at:

Rull, V. 2021. Biodiversity crisis or sixth mass extinction? EMBO Reports, e54193.