Asteroid Us

The Honors day on Saturday was way more entertaining and informative than I thought it would be. The first speaker was super interesting–especially regarding the news that’s recently come out about dark matter and dark energy. I was also really interested in the study on how coffee can affects weight–even though there were no results, I honestly really want to see how they turn out.

One that resonated the most with me was the talk on the redheaded woodpeckers. (There’s an obvious joke to be made here about how I’m a redhead, so fire away.) This one really caught my attention because the topic of species endangerment and extinction has always been something I’ve thought about and researched.

The talk was about how the population of redheaded woodpeckers was in decline, and what different factors meant for a population. Factors considered were the number of dead trees, the number of dead limbs, the percentage of canopy cover, tree size, the percentage of oaks, the percentage of red oaks, and the percentage of white oaks. Ultimately it was found that canopy cover, dead limbs, and the types of oaks seemed to matter the most.

Why were the redheaded woodpeckers declining in the first place though? Their natural habitat, the savanna, has been rapidly disappearing. Only 0.01% of the original midwest savannas remain. This has resulted in said 70% decline since 1966.

This phenomena gives way to a disturbing fact that not a lot of us are aware of.

Earth’s history is marred with occurrences that we refer to as “extinction events”. The one that immediately comes to mind for most people is the Cretaceous-Paleogene, otherwise known as the extinction of the dinosaurs(commonly thought to be the result of a comet, asteroid, or meteor). But there are plenty more that are often forgot. In fact, the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction isn’t even the biggest in our history.

That honor would go to the Great Permian Extinction, also cleverly known as “The Great Dying”. No one is really sure what caused this event–after all, it happened hundreds of millions of years ago, and the Earth was vastly different. But we do know that, whatever it was, it killed 96% of all marine species and 70% of all land-dwellers. Recovery of those species on land took much longer than after any other extinction event. So much biodiversity was lost that full recovery took upwards of 10 million years.

Why do I mention these events? Because the redheaded woodpeckers may simply be a victim of another mass extinction event that is happening right now. Behold, the sixth mass extinction: the Holocene Extinction Event. Estimates on the severity have calculated that the current rate of species extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than any other mass extinction yet.

“We have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.”

A terrifying quote, no? It’s from The World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: a Second Notice, and multinational statement asserting the existence of this Holocene Extinction.

And unlike other major extinction events, we are perfectly aware of what is causing this mass tragedy: us.

All it takes is looking at habitat of the redheaded woodpecker.