More Than 11,000 Plants, Animals Face Extinction

October 9, 2002

Sad beyond belief...We humans are the cancer of the earth..We are causing

species die off as bad as the ice age and whatever killed off the dinosaurs...

Where is the hope gang ?

More Than 11,000 Plants, Animals Face ExtinctionTue Oct 8, 8:33 AM

EThttp://story.news./news?tmpl=story & u=/nm/20021008/sc_nm/environment_e\

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GENEVA (Reuters) - Some 11,170 plant and animal species face extinction,

including a European lynx that could become the first wild cat species to have

disappeared for thousands of years, a major conservation group said Tuesday.

The Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN) also sounded the alarm about the

saiga, a nomadic antelope of Central Asia whose population has dropped by more

than 90 percent in just 10 years due to poaching.

The IUCN's " Red List of Threatened Species " says Indonesia, India, Brazil and

China are home to the most threatened mammals and birds, while plant species are

declining rapidly in South and Central America, Central and West Africa, and

Southeast Asia.

Some 124 species, mainly plants, have joined the threatened list since it was

last issued in September 2000. At the same time, two species believed extinct

have been " rediscovered. "

They are the Lord Howe Island stick insect, which was previously thought to have

disappeared from the Australian island in 1920, and the Bavarian pine vole, the

IUCN said.

The population of Iberian lynx, which numbered 1,200 in the early 1990s, has

dropped to less than half in the wake of efforts to control rabbits, its main

prey, in Spain and Portugal.

" There are fewer than 20 Iberian lynx in Portugal, it is really on its way out

there and will be very soon in Spain, " Peter Jackson, of the IUCN's cat

specialist group, told Reuters.

The IUCN said that although several sub species of wild cat, including a number

of tigers, have disappeared, the Iberian lynx would be the first full species to

die out since humans began keeping any kind of record more than 2,000 years ago.

Habitats with the highest number of threatened mammals and birds are lowland and

mountain tropical rainforest. Freshwater habitats are also extremely vulnerable

with many threatened fish, reptile, amphibian and invertebrate species.

The IUCN's information comes from a network of 7,000 experts and data from

partner groups including BirdLife International.

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faith.

October 9, 2002

>> Sad beyond belief...We humans are the cancer of the earth..We are causing species die off as bad as the ice age and whatever killed off the dinosaurs... Where is the hope gang ? <<

Hope is in the human heart--a heart where cooperation is prized above confrontation, where wrongs aren't made right by another wrong, where peace is not waged by making war, where love is practiced because it's the right things to do.

Where is the hope? Sadly, it's in those hearts that we cannot find.

Dave O