Under a "natural" rate of extinction, the study said that two species go extinct per 10,000 species per 100 years, rather than the one species that previous work has assumed.
If we don't do something, the rate of extinction is getting faster and faster".
Gesture Toward Hard Times: "The rate of extinction is now a thousand times higher than before humans entered the scene.
We are currently losing species at 1000 times the background rate – that is, the natural rate of extinction.
So the message is loud and clear: gardeners could slow the rate of extinction by planting natives in their yards.
Once forest cover does start increasing, the rate of extinction should dwindle.There are, however, two criticisms of this analysis.
The rate of extinction for species in the 20th century was up to 100 times higher than it would have been without man's impact, they said.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural rate of extinction.
With the rate of extinction as it is, their binomials may leave future historians shaking their heads at our weird obsessions.
In particular, five times in this past 500 million years the steady background rate of extinction has shot up for a period of time.
The report warned that the present rate of loss of biodiversity may be up to 1,000 times higher than the natural rate of extinction.
