Putting the beginning of modern humans at around 200,000 years ago, a recent study corroborates the growing belief that humanity has had a devastating effect on the survival of other species, which continues to this moment. But, what the study, just published in the prestigious journal, Science, found was that, contrary to the popular idea that climate change was most likely responsible for the loss of the “Ice age megafauna” – the largest terrestrial mammals ever to live – in fact, human activity was to blame.
Climate change has proved inimical to species survival, for sure, but the fossil record shows it killing large and small animal species alike at about the same rate, whereas the appearance of humans is followed by a dramatic increase in extinction of large animals, like woolly mammoths and giant ground sloths.
Once the modern era commenced, about ten thousand years ago, and as technologically advanced ways of killing emerged as a result of the industrial revolution, beginning in Britain in the 19th Century, our destruction of larger species expanded into the seas, with heavy losses in whales and large, apex-predatory fishes.
We are also exterminating small and medium size animals, and plants – methodically destroying the very means of the world to sustain ourselves.
It seems an uphill battle to learn how we cause the problem, and can solve it. Arguably, people are starting to understand that the ivory trade has been devastating to survival of elephants in Africa and Asia. Grudgingly and in painfully slow increments with set-backs, there is movement to curtail international trade in elephant ivory.
But, in response there has been a similar, less-often-reported, ongoing decline in another of the surviving species of “megafauna”, the river hippopotamus. Their tusks – elongated teeth – also consist of ivory, less desired by artisans than elephant ivory but still valued. Large discrepancies in trade data regarding how many hippo teeth are shipped out of Africa are occurring. Almost all hippo ivory shipped internationally passes through Hong Kong. And, you can easily find it offered for sale online.
It’s not that the hippos are not protected in African countries, but as is true of so many products from species in increasing decline, the smuggling is facilitated by corruption, lack of law enforcement and investigation resources, and lack of accurate assessments of wild population sizes. In one investigation, conservationists found nearly 31,000 pounds of hippo teeth unaccounted for, equalling about 2,700 animals, roughly 2% of the current estimate of hippo numbers.
Meanwhile, increasing loss of habitat and encroachment by humans unhappy with large, dangerous, crop-damaging animals in their midst, also contribute to the decline of the species.
As the researchers who wrote the article in Science concluded, at the rate we’re going, the largest mammal left on Earth a couple of centuries from now will be the domestic cow. The most numerous of the medium-sized mammals will be what it already is: us.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry