Focusing On The Conservation of Ecosystems, Habitats & Wildlife

Animals

There are probably about 10 million species in the kingdom of animals.  About 1.3 million of them have been named and described by the scientific community, but the total number can only be estimated because much of the world has not yet been properly surveyed.  New techniques are constantly being developed for examining previously uncharted regions that were thought to be barren.

While the rate of extinction through natural processes is estimated as less than one species a year for every million species, habitat destruction has led to a current annual extinction rate of between 1,000 and 10,000 per million species.

The disappearance of some species represents lost opportunities for exploiting genetic peculiarities that could have been harnessed for medicine and agriculture. A few will be “keystone” species, whose destruction will spell doom for entire communities.