This page provides an opportunity for the global community to participate in commemorating the annual extinction of 27,000 plant and animal species.

The loss of species occurs in a silence. Few people are aware of the time when a species is lost for ever and sadly few people know the consequences of the loss. One of the concerning aspects of extinction is the reduction of bio diversity and the negative impact this has on the sustainability of the existing life forms (Wilson, 2002). Numerous studies, in a variety of ecosystems, indicate that ‘the more species that live together, the more stable and productive the ecosystem they compose’ (Wilson, 2002, p. 110).  The loss of 27 000 species diminishes the sustainability of existing species.

The rate of species loss
The figure of 27 000 species lost to extinction each year sits in the mid-range of estimates. Dr Peter Hay (2007) explains that:
Those who do the science estimate that species extinctions are occurring within the range of 17,000 species per year – Edward Wilson’s mathematically-derived 1988 estimate – to Jared Diamond’s mind-boggling 1992 estimate of an annual loss of 150,000 species. Richard Leakey (with Roger Lewin), writing later in the 1990s, argues that even if we take a lower figure within this range, 30,000 species per year, say, that is an extinction rate 120,000 times higher than the ‘normal’, or ‘background,’ extinction rate, which the fossil record establishes at ‘an average of one every four years’.
The problem is largely one of habitat loss. By the mid-1990s, 80,000 square miles of forest were falling each year – 40 to 50 percent higher than a mere decade previously – with the result that only about 10 percent of the original tropical forest cover is now still in place, and, say Leakey and Lewin, come 2050, that will reduce further to a ‘tiny remnant’. If these trends continue, they conclude, the world stands to lose something like 50 percent of all species.
(Dr Peter Hay is Reader in Geography and Environmental Politics at the University of Tasmania)

Case studies
Making nature: Extinct Tasmanian plants. - Dr Robyn Glade-Wright's PhD exegesis

Contributing information about species loss to this site
You are welcome to:

Please email information, as a Word document attachment. Also please include details about yourself so that we can correctly acknowledge you as the source of the information.

References for this page
Hay, P. (2007, June). Ethics, politics and the developing revolution in humankind’s relationship to other life. Paper presented at the conference on Biodiversity; balancing conservation and production, Launceston, Tasmania.

Wilson, E. (2002). The Future of Life. London: Little Brown.