http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1507866.stm
Friday, 24 August,
2001, 20:31 GMT 21:31 UK
Dying
species 'endangering' Earth
By BBC News Online's environment correspondent Alex Kirby
CAPTION #1:
Recently succumbed to extinction: The golden toads of Costa Rica
CAPTION #2:
Some species may survive only in zoos
A distinguished conservationist
has rekindled the dispute about
how many species are becoming extinct.
He is Dr Richard Leakey,
formerly head of Kenya's civil service
and earlier of its wildlife service.
Dr Leakey,
speaking in South Africa, said the world was losing
between 50,000 and 100,000 species every year.
He said this
rate of extinction, twice the estimate he gave
four years ago, was imperilling the planet.
Speaking in Cape Town,
Dr Leakey said it was only the five
earlier mass extinctions in the Earth's history, the last
of which saw the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago,
that had shown the same rate of loss.
"At that rate
we are probably approaching a point similar
to mass extinction", he said.
Dr Leakey argued that
the environment must be seen as a
basic human right, and preserving land and conserving
its wildlife was an "absolute necessity".
Lower estimate
People had to decide
exactly how much land should be
given over to conservation.
In 1997, at a meeting
of the United Nations' Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites),
Dr Leakey gave a much lower estimate of the extinction rate.
