As Species Disappear: A Time for Bold Action

National Wildlife, Feb-March, 1999

"Holocaust" is not a word to be used lightly, but it is the term chosen by conservation strategist Norman Myers to describe human behaviors that are destroying Earth's other forms of life (see page 30). Our planet is losing species faster than at any time in the last 65 million years--and we are all at fault.

Myers' essay on this assault, or biotic holocaust as he calls it, is not just a hand-wringing tale of doom, however. There is still time to do the right thing, he argues. Only now the actions must be bolder, and they will require fundamental changes to the way human societies work.

The eye of a white rhinoceros in a photo (above) by roving editor Frans Lanting is our symbol for the story. Some readers looking at this simple image may see nothing more than a sensory organ in a weathered face. But to many, it may also evoke eons of biological history and perhaps, as it stares back at us, speak to the great ethical concerns at stake.

This issue also explores some happier news--how people from the Philippines to the Caribbean are finding ways to make a difference. Discover how one determined woman, Amanda Vincent, an authority on seahorses, is saving these beleaguered fishes (page 22). Or learn how Michael Bobb and his companions on the island of St. Lucia are saving their national symbol--a parrot--in ways that provide a model to other countries in the region.

Finally, join our writer Ed Struzik as he travels with the interim leader of what is about to become Canada's newest territory, a vast region of the Far North called Nunavut (page 12). Most of Nunavut's 22,000 residents are Native people who will control the fate of huge numbers of northern animals. As Struzik reports what's at stake, he gets a little more than he bargained for: a hair-raising adventure in a land with polar bears, crushing ice and small spirit people called Inugagallulit.