Fundamentals of Conservation Biology. Malcolm L. Hunter, Jr.

      PART II

      Threats to Biodiversity

       The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

       Aldo Leopold

       When the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be seen again.

       William Beebe

       … the worst thing that will probably happen – in fact is already well under way – is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or even the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process now ongoing that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

       Edward O. Wilson

       Humans, unlike any other multicellular species in Earth’s history, have emerged as a global force that is transforming the ecology of an entire planet.

       Erle C. Ellis

       Extinction is forever.

       The Great Auk, a nearly meter‐tall seabird whose breeding colonies occurred on isolated islands widely scattered across the north Atlantic, was harvested to extinction by 1850. (John Gerrard Keulemans/Wikimedia)