Extinct is forever...

Well we ended up talking about The Body Shop the other day and I happened to remember the only 2 things I own from there. Both were a gift given to me by my cousin from HK when she came visiting yearsssssssss ago. I don't remember how long its been but its been very long a minimum of 7 years already if not more. Anyway my cousin said that she thought this would be a perfect gift for me - because I was so much into the environment and natural stuff and all of that.

Anyway these 2 things are a wallet and a pencil box. They are both purplish and have images of animals on them. Its sort of a set. But I always liked the wallet more than the pencil case. Maybe because it was more useful.

Anyway both of these have a line on them - EXTINCT IS FOREVER.

Now I don't remember these items everyday anymore because I don't use them. They are kept somewhere in a never opened drawer in my cupboard and therefore I don't contemplate on the line anymore. Which of course is really sad because the line is great. Extinct is really forever. And we somehow don't realise how hard hitting that is. We never look at things so harshly but we should. Whenever we look at extinction all we think about is the Dodo bird and maybe the whales, sharks and tiger.

Well while its true that tigers, sharks, etc face the danger of extinction, currently, there are approximately 1000-1100 species of birds and mammals that are facing extinction. If invertebrates and plants are included, the total number of species in imminent danger is around 20,000. If we look at the past - It is estimated that about 125 species of birds and 60 species of mammals have become extinct since 1600.

The rate of extinction of species has risen dramatically and we should really sit back and think about why and what we can do about it. We cannot deny that humans are of major cause of species extinctions. We take over their natural surrounding and build what we need to build. I am not against progress and all of that but we never really sit and see LONG TERM IMPACT of our actions. We look maybe 2 - 3 years down the line but not a 100 - 200 years from now. Which is when the lack of certain plants/animals will come back to haunt us. Not only are we destroying natural environments but are also polluting our surrounding horribly. This pollution is only affecting us but affecting all the species around too.

They say that in the jungles of the Amazon and Congo Basins, there are plants that might hold the cure to cancer. Herbal remedies for our fatal illness maybe locked somewhere in these rich forests and what are we doing? Boosting the lumber industry in such regions. Its about time we realised the true cost of our actions.