I'm freaked out by this sudden plethora of species undergoing a catastrophic population decline. I mean, we've had "endangered species" for decades, and there are plenty of animals and ecosystems we're driving into steady decline. Loss of habitat (generally and due to global warming), pollution, over-hunting/fishing...these have been in the works for a while. Yeah, its starting to catch up with us in a big way, but its still something we've been able to see coming.
But for the last couple years there has been an increasing trickle of news stories with headlines like "Mystery Deaths Spark Fears of _____ Extinction". The sudden, devastating spread of colony collapse disorder among honey bees is the most famous, but there also dramatic die-offs among amphibians, North American bats, oak trees and probably a bunch more that I haven't heard of. And probably even more that no one has heard of. This is scary to me. After all, the accelerating decline of, say, polar bears is sad and totally our fault, but it doesn't give you Ten Biblical Plagues images like this one:
With the trees its not a rush of plague death, but its equally spooky. It seems that oaks in many areas of America produced ZERO acorns this year. None. People talk about walking in the forests near their home and just feeling like something was wrong. They couldn't figure out what it was until they realized they didn't hear the familiar crunch of acorns underfoot or the the thwock of one hitting the ground. I have a feeling we're in for a lot more of these unsettling absences when we go out into the natural world.
And I don't get how cavalier some of the scientists in that article are. Its always "cyclical" or a "bad season"...until suddenly you're looking at population collapse. Here's a quote: "What's there to worry about? If you're a squirrel, its a big worry. But its no problem for the oak tree. They live a long time. They'll produce acorns when they're ready to." Setting aside the potential for thousands of starving squirrels mobbing family pets and small children, I would think that something as unusual as zero production would generate a little more concern from that guy, especially given the equally unheard-of problems occuring in the populations of other species. And especially especially given that there is starting to be a pretty strong consensus that we're in the midst of a sixth mass extinction event, with extinction rates thought to be higher than any previous extinction event, and estimates that as much as 50% of species will be gone by the end of the 21st century. Come on, dude, why you think oak trees are immune?
I also like how "EUREKA!" everyone gets when some research team can stick a name on whatever disease is cutting down a species. "Oh its Chytridiomycosis that's killing all the frogs. Phew, glad we figured that one out." Well, I don't know about you guys but I would be more concerned with why all these diseases and disorders are crawling out of the woodwork to decimate perfectly well-adapted animal populations. And I'd want to do more to predict which one of these diseases is going to develop a taste for h. sapiens, y'know?
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