ABSTRACT
Recent history has seen the rampant loss of biodiversity that continues largely unchecked to this day. Indeed, even in the geological history of the Earth, such rates of extinction have only been seen on six previous occasions, in each case in relation to tremendous natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions or catastrophic collisions with asteroids. Harvard ecologist E. O. Wilson was once famously asked, of all the calamities which could befall the Earth, which is the greatest? After a brief reflection, Dr Wilson replied (1994):
The worst thing that can happen, will happen, is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process on-going in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendents are least likely to forgive us.
