🚀 go-pugleaf

Mike Vandeman (mjvande@pbhye.PacBell.COM) wrote:
: Also _The End of Evolution_, by Peter Ward, and _Gaia -- An Atlas of Planet
: Management_, ed by Norman Myers. The former contains (p.271) "it seems
: incontrovertible that to save a significant portion of current biodiversity,
: we need to set aside gigantic natural reserves, places where humans are not
: welcome, places that will exist for millenia, places that will weather
: the upcoming human population explosion." He is a paleontologist who is an
: expert on past and current extinctions. He shows how, every time mankind
: arrives at a new place, s/he causes the extinction of a huge proportion of
: native species.

Well, Mike, haven't you been saying that humans have already invaded about
every piece of the planet available to them?  If that's true, shouldn't we
expect that the huge proportions of native species that are going to
become extinct as a result have already done so?  Or could it be that
these things take time and are dependent on the number of people occupying
an area, how long they remain, and what activities they undertake?