Reduce the Rate of Extinction: Annotated Bibliography

Photo take by Harley Kingston 

"Protect and Serve." Nature.com. Nature, 10 Dec. 2014. Web. 24 Sept. 2015. <http://www.nature.com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/news/protect-and-serve-1.16514>.

            The author from nature.com claims that “nations must keep expanding conservational efforts to avoid a biodiversity conflict”.  To stress the main claim of the article the author includes statistics about the number of endangered species and the number of species that go extinct every year.  The author also mentions contributing factors to the higher rate of extinction like climate change and invasive species, all of which relate directly to human activity.  Conservational efforts are mentioned in this article, but the author claims they aren’t enough and if the rate of extinction continues at its current rate then the earth could witness its sixth mass extinction within the next couple of centuries.  The author also argues that the cost to protect these species and their environment is nothing compared the economic benefits these species and environments could contribute. 

Novacek, Michael, and Elsa Cleland. "The Current Biodiversity Extinction Event: Scenarios for Mitigation and Recovery." PNAS. 8 May 2001. Web. 24 Sept. 2015. <http://www.pnas.org/content/98/10/5466.full>.

            The authors claim that the “the current massive degradation of habitat and extinction of species is taking place on a catastrophically short timescale, and their effects will fundamentally reset the future evolution of the planet's biota”.  To get this point across the authors reference past extinctions and the timescale in which they happened and how long it took the earth to recover.  They also argue the importance of recovery in human dominated ecosystems.  This article gives different scenarios that provide solutions to the claim they are making.  These authors build upon the idea that something must be done to prevent to loss of biodiversity and even provide examples on how this can be done.

Myers, Norman. "Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation Priorities."Nature.com. Nature Publishing Group, 24 Feb. 2000. Web. 24 Sept. 2015. <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v403/n6772/full/403853a0.html>.

            The author claims that conserving biodiversity hotspots is key to preventing habit loss and the extinction of species.  Biodiversity hotspots ranks conservation areas by their importance, basically stating that some areas are more important to preserve than others (hotspot expansion strategy).  This relates to previous claims because argues a solution to increased rates of extinction and provides a conservation effort.  This article from Nature gives information about the financial aspect of this claim by providing funding information.

Vitousek, Peter, Harold Mooney, Jane Lubchenco, and Jerry Milillo. "Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems." Science. 25 July 1997. Web. 25 Sept. 2015. <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/277/5325/494.full>.

            The author claims that ecosystems are dominated by humans and directly affected by human activities and processes.  The article makes claims on how humans are negatively impacting ecosystems by destroying them through habitat destruction (due to the increasing population).  This article directly relates to the main topic of the increased rate of extinction because it elaborates on the topic on how humans are influencing the rate of extinction through processes that destroy natural areas.   The human population is growing, thus more land has to be devoted to sustain the growing population through process like land transformation which cause biotic changes and alterations to biogeochemical cycles.

Mckee, Jefferey. "Journal of Cosmology." Journal of Cosmology. 27 Oct. 2009. Web. 25 Sept. 2015. <http://journalofcosmology.com/Extinction104.html>.

The author of the article Contemporary Mass Extinction 
and the Human Population Imperative makes the claim “humans and their predecessors have accelerated the loss of Earth’s biodiversity into a sixth global mass extinction”. To support his claim the author organizes his article in to sections they focus on key topics.  The article relates to the main claim from the article from Nature because it describes how humans specifically influenced the rate of extinction through their behaviors and growing population size.  The author also believes that the human population should be at the forefront of conservational strategies.  He believes that until the issue of over population by humans is addressed, even with the best conservational efforts, the rate of extinction will continue at its current pace.