Vanishing Wildlife

Only moments ago in biological time, the earth abounded with a myriad of mammals, reptiles and fish that ran afoul of the iron laws of evolution and natural disaster, and are now extinct. But the most devastating killer has been man. Since 1600, when the first precise records were compiled, man has butchered creatures ranging from the abalone to the blue whale and the zebra. "During the past 150 years," says Ecologist Lee M. Talbot of the Smithsonian Institution, "the rate of extermination of mammals has increased 55-fold. If the killing goes on at this pace, in about 30 years all of the remaining 4,062 species of mammals will be gone."

A scare story? Not quite. Today, the authoritative "red data book" of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources lists 835 "endangered species and subspecies" that hover on the brink of extinction. Among their habitats and situations:

INDIA. In 1930, the subcontinent had an estimated 40,000 tigers--quite a few, considering India's centuries-old passion for blood sports. But now the worldwide demand for furs has done what sports alone could not. In 1970, India has only 2,500 tigers left. The country's mere 175 lions fare even worse. For one thing, huge numbers of cattle have denuded vegetation, thus driving away the deer upon which the lions feed. For another, some Hindu untouchables have no scruples about eating meat and regularly chase the lions away from kills to appropriate the meat for themselves. Also vanishing: India's blackbuck antelope, sloth bear and snow leopard.

AUSTRALIA. Though Australians are among the world's most sports-minded people, they seem oddly unconcerned about their wildlife. In the 1930s, government machine-gunners cut down 20,000 ostrichlike emus in a single sweep. Thousands of rare giant green sea turtles have also lately been killed for their oil, a prime ingredient of some skin creams. What Australians are doing to the kangaroo, the country's unofficial symbol, was recently summed up by an outback sheep farmer who bragged: "On my spread, we've shot 20,000 'roos in the last four years and there's still lots left." Also vanishing, at least in wild areas: the koala "Teddy bear" and the Tasmanian wolf, a zebra-striped, carnivorous marsupial that often hops kangaroo-like on its hind legs.

EASTERN EUROPE AND U.S.S.R. Water pollution and land reclamation threaten 26 species in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania and Poland. A leading Soviet conservationist asked in a recent issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda: "Why do we see almost no flocks of cranes and geese in April? Why can we hear no quail in the fields in June?" One answer, as in much of the West, is the overuse of pesticides. Recently, two Soviet conservationists boldly and publicly accused none other than the Minister of Agriculture of illegal hunting in game preserves supposedly protected by the ministry.

INDOCHINA. Defoliation and bombing in Viet Nam, in addition to killing off many species, has driven most of that nation's elephants, monkeys and rhinos to the doubtful sanctuaries of Cambodia and Laos. Only the tigers have stayed behind--to feed on human battlefield casualties.

UNITED STATES. Now threatened with extinction, to join the Eastern elk and passenger pigeon, are the American alligator, Southern bald eagle, Columbian white-tailed deer, Utah prairie dog and ivory-billed woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in the U.S. Even so, the mainland has a good record compared with Hawaii, which has destroyed more native plants and animals in the 192 years since Captain Cook's arrival than has all the rest of America in the same period. Hawaii's endangered wildlife --partly ravaged by the introduction of outside predators like mongooses and rats--includes all the fresh-water fish, all the mammals, one-half of the insects, one-half of the land mollusks and 36% of the birds (another 36% are already extinct).

Why should anyone care about the land mollusk, or even the Southern bald eagle? Because, as ecologists keep repeating, all species are interrelated in the biological pyramid. Destroying one can adversely affect many others. A prime example is Australia's Great Barrier Reef, which is being eaten away by starfish. Some scientists speculate that the ecological balance was upset when man began to remove their natural predators.

Fortunately, a few men are working to undo the errors of the many. U.S. conservationists have provided sanctuaries in Texas for whooping cranes, which have thus risen from a low of 15 cranes in 1941 to nearly 80 today. Similar efforts saved the grizzly bear, the bison and African cheetah. On Grand Cayman island in the Caribbean, a new "turtle farm" is now hatching the first of thousands of eggs. This will help prevent the turtles' rapid depletion by the cosmetics industry. In the Pacific Northwest, the sockeye salmon is proliferating, thanks to artificial incubation and man-made channels that allow the fish to bypass barriers on their way upriver to spawning lakes. Conservationists are also bringing back the takahe, a large New Zealand bird that resembles the extinct dodo, and the vicuna, a llamalike Peruvian animal that has been overhunted for its luxurious wool.

Last week Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed two bills banning the sale of certain rare furs and hides in New York State. Manhattan Furrier Jacques Kaplan is keeping in step with public sentiment by showing mink furs treated to look like tiger and leopard skins in his fall collection. On the other hand, worried about the country's new environmental awareness, David Klapisch, vice president of Southern Trading Corp. (reptiles), complains that "conservation is good, but there has to be a limit."

Conservationists fear that the limit may have already been passed. Biologist David Ehrenfeld writes in his new book, Biological Conservation: "All species are potential Humpty Dumpty's. The processes of evolution, as we know them, will not put them together again on this planet once they are destroyed." Even now, man may qualify for a niche in the red data book. "There is so much DDT in human fat," says Ehrenfeld, "that if man were edible, he would be banned from the market."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.