Polar Bears and Hippos are now classified as threatened species. This makes me so angry, and very sad - both are huge, amazing, majestic animals that we have no right to be affecting. The main threat to polar bears is reduced habitat because of climate change, and hippos are being hunted without restriction in the Congo.
The World Conservation Union, or IUCN, says that 16,000 species of animals and plants are at risk of disappearing, including one in four mammals and one in eight birds.
Why do us humans think we're at the top of the food chain? We seem to have the impression that we're in charge of the earth. Too bad for us that the earth's ecosystems are more like a web than a chain. We are eventually going to tip ecology's balance so far off-kilter that it will be beyond redemption. And I wouldn't be surprised if the one strand of the web that could have saved us will be some tiny bacterium or some insect we classify as a pest.
We have no clue what we're doing.
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