Homo Destructor

Let’s face the truth: human progress has devastating consequences for other species.

In the past few weeks, many organizations have published information regarding the status of endangered plant and animal species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially declared the North American puma (puma concolor cougar), a subspecies of the mountain lion, to be extinct. At the beginning of the 1970s, this large feline was listed as an endangered species, and in 2015 specialists reported that there had been no more sightings or evidence of any North American pumas. So, on Jan. 23 of this year, the service published its report declaring the animal officially extinct.

This large feline’s habitat spanned from southeastern Ontario and the south of Quebec in Canada to western Kentucky, Illinois, and Michigan in the United States. It was threatened and hunted in order to defend livestock.

The lesson for us is that the colonization and devastation of animal habitats is the result of a rising population and indiscriminate expansion of human settlements.

Large felines, in particular, have experienced a terrible decline. The United Nations Environment Program has pointed out that 95 percent of the planet’s tiger population has died off during the last 100 years. In Africa in the past 20 years, the lion population has declined by 40 percent. Simultaneously, snow leopards, jaguars and other similar species have found themselves in danger of extinction due to loss of habitats, poaching and other threats. The U.N. Environment Program expects that 2018 will bring “a major new push to protect the world’s big cats.”

Hopefully, that will happen for large felines and for all other species too.

Poaching is one of the most abhorrent crimes that humans commit. It brings easy money. One species that has been severely diminished by poaching is the rhinoceros. Two weeks ago, the World Wildlife Fund reported that, according to South Africa’s Department of the Environment, 1,028 rhinoceros were hunted illegally in 2017. The reason? The black market in rhino horns.

Like the rhinoceros, many species are hunted illegally because their horns, tusks, heads and other body parts are sold to unscrupulous people. The result is more and more illegal hunting.

Polar bears, too, are living through hard times. A study conducted by the United States Geological Survey and published in Science proves that polar bears are arriving at extinction faster than predicted. With their habitats transforming rapidly, the kings of the Arctic are fighting to find nourishment and to survive. With smaller ice caps, polar bears cannot hunt seals, their main source of nutrition, as easily. The bears are losing weight, between two to four pounds a day. The result is that polar bears are dying of hunger due to climate change, which like poaching, has its origins in human behavior.

Every species on earth is or will be fighting to adapt to climate change. Some will survive, others will not.

The Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature recently released a report that 25,800 species of animals and plants are in danger of extinction. Sadly, in 2017 alone, 1,800 newly-perished species were added to the list.

These figures are scandalous because they verify that the human being is the most destructive predator on this planet earth. We’ve brought several fragile ecosystems to breaking point as the unconscious, and inhuman, byproducts of economic development and increased wealth. If we fail to give ourselves limits, balance will be difficult to come by, and respect for living things impossible — and that includes respect for Homo sapiens.

Come to think of it, maybe our species has been misnamed. Maybe we ought to be reclassified as homo destructor.