Biodiversity Is Essential For Life To Exist

THE MONARCH BUTTERFLY IS NOW OFFICIALLY ENDANGERED AND ON THE ‘RED LIST’

According to the 2021 count, there are roughly 1,914 monarch butterflies alive. A day ago, the monarch butterfly was put the on the endangered species list, also known as the ‘red list’. The red list is the IUCN’s list of endangered species and is updated every two years. It includes 41,000+ species, with 1,300+ of those species in the US. However, it is likely that around 1,000,000 (1 million) animal and plant species are threatened with extinction.

I will likely do this later, but if you’d like to see my usual profile on endangered species for the monarch butterfly, continue below.

This is a Higgins Eye, a type of pearlymussel. It is currently endangered, like most mussels. For more info, go below.

Hi!

I just wanted to let you all know:

CHEMICAL POLLUTION HAS PASSED A SAFE LIMIT FOR HUMANITY

That’s right, we have succeeded in beginning to extinct ourselves. Look at this quote from The Guardian:

“The cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends, scientists have said.

Plastics are of particularly high concern, they said, along with 350,000 synthetic chemicals including pesticides, industrial compounds and antibiotics. Plastic pollution is now found from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans, and some toxic chemicals, such as PCBs, are long-lasting and widespread.

The study concludes that chemical pollution has crossed a ‘planetary boundary’, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years.

Chemical pollution threatens Earth’s systems by damaging the biological and physical processes that underpin all life. For example, pesticides wipe out many non-target insects, which are fundamental to all ecosystems and, therefore, to the provision of clean air, water and food.

‘There has been a fiftyfold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950 and this is projected to triple again by 2050,’ said Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) who was part of the study team. ‘The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.’

Dr Sarah Cornell, an associate professor and principal researcher at SRC, said: ‘For a long time, people have known that chemical pollution is a bad thing. But they haven’t been thinking about it at the global level. This work brings chemical pollution, especially plastics, into the story of how people are changing the planet.’” (credit to The Guardian)

Yeah. I’ll probably make a big post about this soon, so look for it.

Dusky Seaside Sparrow such as the one above went extinct in 1987. This species was threatened by dehabitization (loss of habitat) and a contaminated food chain, meaning that animals from other food chain got into its and basically disrupted the entire system. Continue for more facts about this sparrow.

WHY DOES EXTINCTION MATTER?

Pure-bred Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit’s like this one when completely extinct in 2008. This species was threatened by dehabitization (loss of habitat) (a form of climate change). Below are some facts about this rabbit.

Hi everyone!

Did you know that without biodiversity life will not work any longer?

Biodiversity is the diversity of all the different types of animals and plants and insects in the biosphere. And guess what? By overfishing, poaching (guess what, that’s one of the big ones!), polluting, and climate change (which we caused) we’re effectively destroying biodiversity.

In this blog I will talk about how we’re destroying biodiversity, and some of the most endangered animals and plants in the world.