A rendering of a woolly mammoth,a species of extinct Ice Age megafauna.
While scientists seem in general agreement that we are entering the next period of massive species extinction, popularly called the Anthropocene, there have been lesser periods of extinction over more extended periods of time. Since early childhood, I’ve been fascinated—and horrified—by the relatively quick loss of so many of what are often called the “Ice Age megafauna”—large animals that lived in North America prior to the end of the last ice age. Why did North America lose its native elephants, camels, horses, sabre-tooths, giant ground sloths, and so many other large species?[teaserbreak]
I was aware of two conflicting ideas. One theory states that, because the extinctions coincided with the arrival of humans, it is likely that those humans had, at least in part, something to do with it! The opposing view states that mere Stone Age humans, who arrived in the western hemisphere less than twenty thousand years ago (with one extreme claim putting it at about 100,000 years ago), couldn’t possibly exterminate so many species.
But remember, those animals would not have been naturally afraid of people. We know from accounts by early explorers visiting previously uninhabited regions that animals who have never encountered humans do not naturally fear us.
Recently, a scientist informed me of a technical paper published two years ago that gives fascinating insight to the issue. A group of researchers carefully analyzed periods in which large numbers of animals went extinct across the world, comparing these periods of extinction to estimates of when humans arrived in those places, and found a correlation. Very approximately speaking, humans arrived in Australia about 45,000 years ago and numbers of large animals went extinct at around the same time. The same thing happened in Europe about 50,000 years ago; in Japan about 30,000 years ago; in North America about 15,000 years ago; in South America about 13,000 years ago; in the Caribbean about 6,000 years ago; in Madagascar about 2,000 years ago; and in New Zealand about 700 years ago. According to the study, each region experienced a loss of large animals with no overall correlation with climatic variation.
It is a popular belief that somehow “aboriginal” people are different from modern urbanites who, by virtue of their technologically facilitated separation from the land, are fundamentally less likely to understand the plight of the planet’s dwindling wildlife. Notwitstanding often courageous efforts of indigenous people to protect the environment, which I of course support, people are people, and, as a species, we are inherently deadly (or, as the authors call us, “super-predators”).
It has been claimed that humans alone outweigh all other animals on earth, and we now have access to technology that allows us to consume remaining wildlife habitats, and wildlife, at an unparalleled rate.
There is no validity in either despair; we know better, can do better, and just as we are destructive, so are we capable of compassion and restraint. It’s up to us; it always has been.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry