The Sixth Extinction: Chapter 9

     In Chapter 9, Kolbert talks about the Venezuelan Reserve 1202 controlled by the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project. The organization was founded by Tom Lovejoy who wanted to protect rainforest areas from deforestation. Lovejoy said that many species vanished from his reserves in the last few decades, which meant that the rainforest ecosystem is losing biodiversity. His research involved making comparisons between the reserves and the main rainforest are. Kolbert goes to Reserve 1202 with ornithologist Mario Cohn-Haft, where she learns that there’s been a gradual decline in the diversity of bird species. Kolbert claims that Reserve 1202 is an “island of habitat” and there isn’t enough space for many different species to develop or even survive on islands. Cohn-Haft and Kolbert go the main rainforest, where he conducts tests and collects samples to compare with those from Reserve 1202. Kolbert then introduces entomologist Terry Erwin, who concluded that rainforests contained at least 30 million species of arthropod during the 1970s. However, other scientists disagree saying that Erwin was overestimating the biodiversity of rainforests, but rainforests were home to a large number of different life forms. Kolbert then talks about how a series of science articles was arguing that a rainforest species went extinct every day. Although the news was exaggerated, it is was concluded that the effects of reducing the amount of available land takes time to set in, and that it's possible that deforested areas can regrow over time.

     The themes that most resonated with this chapter are human survival depends on developing practices that will achieve sustainable systems and humans alter natural systems. In the book it states, “One possibility is that extinction takes time. Wilson’s calculations assume that once an area is deforested, species drop out more or less immediately. But it may take quite a while for a forest to fully ‘relax’, and even small, remnant populations can persist for a long time, depending on the roll of the survival dice.” (Pg. 187) (R) Humans cause deforestation for things like, buildings and fuel/resources or for cleared land to be used as a pasture for livestock and plantation. In order for humans to live life on Earth they have to create different systems, like laws, shops, healthcare, and etc. However, since urbanization is increasing due to the huge amount of technology and the increase in population, many people are looking for places where they can get places to live or different resources. By doing so, the humans are snatching many of the different habitats and niches of many species. And since there are many deforestations happening in rainforests it becomes easier for those species to become endangered quickly because they’re used to their lifestyle, coping mechanisms and strategies in their niche. If you take that away from them, it would cause them to migrate elsewhere, where the temperatures are different and food supply is different. This causes poor adaptation and eventually leads to extinction. (C) I can also connect this to APUSH when I learned about Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was our first Conservation president and did many things to protect nature such as setting away land to promote national parks and to preserve natural preserves rather than deforesting them for other US projects.

By: Mousumi Dhar