After the Black Rhino, who is next?

After the Black Rhino, who is next?

Close on the heels of the news that the Western Black Rhino has been hunted to extinction by Humankind comes another sickening fact to feed our collective revulsion at what we have become: the Nautilus, a living fossil, is the next probable victim.  It takes Mankind 24 hours to eliminate 200 species, daily.

An idiotic belief that the horn of the rhinoceros acts as an aphrodisiac was sufficient to see one sub-species of this wonderful animal hunted to extinction in western Africa - the Western Black Rhino, whose disappearance from our planet was announced last week. Stupidity, superstition, greed and cruelty, a callous disrespect for our environment are the kep words which spring to mind to describe Homo sapiens sapiens, so intelligent that He hunts for pleasure, kills for pleasure and wantonly destroys the treasures that Mother Earth has provided for us.

So congratulations to the sex-crazed monsters and their lackeys in the field, the horn of the Western Black Rhino will be no more and here is a message to these sub-human pieces of excrement: To all those who have hunted and killed Rhino, or used its horn, if you are not man enough to get an erection to do the job properly, next time buy Viagra. I would give the rhino horn another use...some of you might even like it.

Following on the heels of the Western Black Rhino is a living fossil, which has inhabited our seas for five hundred million years, long before the larger dinosaurs became extinct on land, the Nautilus. A resident of our planet since    the Cambrian period, the time before live existed on the land, when the seas were fertile but the land sterile, the Nautilus has been included in the    list of species in imminemt danger of extinction, again due to hunting -   because its shell is valuable.

Millions upon millions of these sea creatures are being slaughtered so that their shells can be turned into jewelry - you can buy one for under 20 dollars on eBay.

Sadly, the Western Black Rhino and the Nautilus are just the tip of the Iceberg, as revealed by the list drawn up by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (1). 40 per cent of Madagascar's reptiles are threatened with extinction, because of illegal trade; five of the eight species of tuna are on the red list (over-fishing), along with the Danube sturgeon (over-fishing), all five species of rhino, polar bears...

In fact, according to the World Wildlife Fund, by the time you have finished reading this article, another species will have become extinct. Up to 200 will have been wiped off the face of the Earth in the next 24 hours and in the next year, around 50,000 unique animals or plants will have been lost. Forever.

In every region of every continent on Earth, the invasion of habitat, unsustainable levels of hunting/poaching and pollution are having devastating effects upon the wildlife.

Since Humankind only ever appears to act for selfish reasons, then let us put it this way: of the estimated 5 to 15 million species of plants, animals and micro-organisms living with us today, only around 1.5 million have been studied and named. 23% of mammals and 12% of birds are on the red list. Let us imagine that the others may hold the key to cures for diseases,  providing unimagineable wealth for the pharmaceutical companies, let us imagine that some others could provide a means of teaching us how to harness energy, giving countless trillions to the banking lobby, and finally let us imagine that may others could provide an insight into how to develop a completely new weapons system, or a biological bomb that could wipe out the population of an entire country, making the weapons lobby so much more powerful.

Or rather, let us pray to Mother Earth to make the one species causing all these problems extinct and the sooner it is done, the better. The answer would be "Do not worry, He is doing it to Himself, and very quickly!" Food for thought? I hope so. Sadly for one species, it is already too late and for another, he or she is roaming his/her habitat desperately looking for a mate because heshe knows deep down that he/she is the only one of the species remaining alive.

Congratulations, Humankind. Nice one.

(1) www.iucnredlist.org

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru