It is by now quite clear that humans are already causing a major mass extinction, with modern land use change adding to the damage that began when our stone age ancestors began making weapons. In the current situation I find it particularly shocking that people still go out and do their bit to accelerate the extinction by manually killing a few animals. From the songbirds captured as delicacy to the sharks murdered for their fins, and the last of the surviving big terrestrial beasts shot as trophies, there may be different reasons why these things are still happening, but all of these just have to stop. (As for the hunters in Europe who are busy controlling the deer population, this wouldn't be necessary if we had a few more wolves ... )
I've written a feature on hunting before (In
October 2015, focusing on the ecological role of Homo sapiens as the unfairly armed top predator killing the wrong animals) but just felt it was time to look at it again, this time with about equal weight given to animals being killed on land, in the oceans, and in the air. The resulting feature is out now:
Hunting wildlife to extinction
Current Biology Volume 29, issue 12, pages R551-R554, June 17, 2019
FREE access to full text and PDF download
Photo: Save the Elephants
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