The rapid disappearance of species was ranked as one of the planet's gravest environmental worries, surpassing pollution, global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer, according to the survey of 400 scientists commissioned by New York's American Museum of Natural History.
The poll's release yesterday comes on the heels of a groundbreaking study ofplant diversity that concluded than at least one in eight known plant speciesis threatened with extinction. Although scientists are divided over the specificnumbers, many believe that the rate of loss is greater now than at any time inhistory.
"The speed at which species are being lost is much faster than any we'veseen in the past -- including those [extinctions] related to meteor collisions," saidDaniel Simberloff, a University of Tennessee ecologist and prominent expert inbiological diversity who participated in the museum's survey. [Note: the lastmass extinction caused by a meteor collision was that of the dinosaurs, 65 millionyears ago.]
Most of his peers apparently agree. Nearly seven out of 10 of the biologistspolled said they believed a "mass extinction" was underway, and anequal number predicted that up to one-fifth of all living species could disappearwithin 30 years. Nearly all attributed the losses to human activity, especiallythe destruction of plant and animal habitats.
Among the dissenters, some argue that there is not yet enough data to supportthe view that a mass extinction is occurring. Many of the estimates of speciesloss are extrapolations based on the global destruction of rain forests and otherrich habitats.
Among non-scientists, meanwhile, the subject appears to have made relativelylittle impression. Sixty percent of the laymen polled professed little or nofamiliarity with the concept of biological diversity, and barely half rankedspecies loss as a "major threat."
The scientists interviewed in the Louis Harris poll were members of the Washington-basedAmerican Institute of Biological Sciences, a professional society of more than5,000 scientists.