What is the cost of the extinction of a whole species of animal?

Question

Are we going to keep destroying habitats to build Wal-marts or new apartments? Are those builders who make thousands of dollars doing anything to replenish what they take?

John Deer - Dinosuars went exticnt due to NATURAL causes - ie something out of their control like a meteor hitting the earth. No one came along and bull dozed over their land just to make a few bucks. And yes the earth would be better without humans. It actaully might have a chance to revert to what it was before we ruined. Show me where the line is......

Answer 1

Yeah,,,,, so I suppose you think Wal-mart killed the Dinosaurs too, huh ?

What would be the cost of extinction of the whole human race? Would that make the earth better? would you volunteer to be first ?

Answer 2

There is no dollar cost. It is like asking how much the Mona Lisa is worth. The answer is $100. Either that of a billion dollars. It is $100 worth of canvas and paint and a billion dollars of sentimental value. So do animals have more than sentimental value? Maybe not. All life is connected, but I bet that it is no big deal for the ecology in general if some rare life form that exists only is one small niche environment went extinct, like the Barton Springs Salamander, which lives only in one pool in Austin Texas and its protection is always used as the reason to outlaw development on hundreds of square miles of land over the aquifer around the pool. Now if mosquitoes went extinct, that would have a major effect and if humans went extinct that would have the largest possible effect. But the cost of that effect? Nobody can say. I challenge anyone who names a dollar value to justify that value.

Answer 3

If they are already that endangered, it is unlikely that they really impact the natural cycle of things anyway.
It is sad, no doubt, but beyond a sentimental value, they are all but gone now, so stopping progress for the sentiment seems silly to me.
Besides, for those that believe in evolution, isn't that just part of the evolutionary process, the end of some, the beginning of others?

Answer 4

The cost of extinction? I don't know for sure but I believe that over 90% of all species that have lived on the earth ARE EXTINCT. What is the effect and what have you noticed?

Answer 5

all life is interrelated ,the cost is change
and in the end changes will affect us
many are already

LOSS OF HABITAT +CLIMATE CHANGE=EXTINCTION

Of the earth's estimated 10 million species, 300,000 have vanished in the past 50 years. each years, 3,000 to 30,000 species become extinct.

A lot of human activity is speeding that up since we tend to overpower all the other species in one way or another.

Some reasons why animals are being wiped out ,in the forests are:

The hunting of exotic species for the consumer market
only about 10% of the animals caught survive

The hunting of animals for food by settlers

Forrest fires ,that have started because of slash and burning of forest ,to clear the land for farming, had gotten out of control

The loss of Habitat because the conditions have changed ,e.g less humidity because of surrounding farmlands ,or over pumping of rivers for human use(farming and utility)

Because of contamination of the waters ,

Expanding populations and expanding farming ,that has to keep pace with the expanding populations are very strong forces that encroach upon the rainforest's
clearing them for farming and settlement areas .

In Mexico is a famous jungle that the Media has been trying to save for years
the Naturalists ,and the government ,keep watch .laws are made for protection the wild and to forbid logging.
TV put out a series of documentaries
there are campaigns in the News papers
and all of this has not made the slightest difference

Rainforest's always are in third world countries and always in third world countries corruption and the need for money s highest

The jungle gets smaller by the day
more and more farmers move in .and burn the trees
It is an impossible situation
as long as there is poverty in these regions the destruction will continue

And the Animals will continue to be trapped ,as long as people keep buying the exotic animals

we must look for ways to improve economic situations on the edges of Nature .

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Trees are coming down all the time ,almost nightly
in My town ,trucks loaded with huge logs of exotic timber leave the mountains with permits bought from corrupt officials.

We can only guess at the exact amount but from my house we can see many bare patches on the mountains and the river is constantly muddy in the last 3 years ,because topsoils, without the protection of the forests , is washed into the rivers ,

This is just one place and this is happening all over Mexico ,the Market for the wood being the USA.

The Indians or local people would cut everything down and burn the forest to replace it with harmful short term farming killing the soil in no time

IN THE PAST
the Sahara used to be forests
Arabia ,Iraq ,Iran used to be fertile lands in biblical times
Ghengas Kahn burned all the forests here and filled the well with water and so turning vast lands into dessert.
the Spanish Armada deforested Spain
.the Phoenician fleet deforested Lebanon

Madagascar a botanic paradise is now destroyed
the exotic animals sold or killed ,the forest slash and burned for agriculture ,the coastal water polluted by topsoils washed from the denuded mountains by the rains.

Many countries in Africa (because of poverty and war as well as greedy farming )

Borneo
India ,China ,Mexico ,South Americas Amazon,Mato Grosso
because of the expensive timber,and expanding `populations
Europe because of civilization,USA,Japan because of overpopulation,

And now the quest for ethanol the bio-.gas is beginning to destroy more than anything else has in the past
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AoZPur3.udhdBeWXChFMKg7sy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20070618163201AAyuI69.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Changes in Climate is affecting micro biological life and
the biggest changes so far are invisible at microscopic levels
many species are going extinct ,whilst others are becoming invasive.

This in turn affect everything that follows

the insects that live of that and then everything that depends on insects of both flora and fauna

vital links in the food chains are disappearing affecting other species further along in the chain

90% of the feral (wild) bee population in the United States has died out.

Recent studies in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have shown that bee diversity is down 80 percent in the sites researched, and that "bee species are declining or have become extinct in Britain." The studies also revealed that the numbers of wildflowers that depend on pollination have dropped by 70 percent.

If bees continue to die off so would the crops they support and with that would ensue major economic disruption and possibly famine.

Bees are not the only pollinators but if these things are happening to bees we can bet on it that other insects are also in trouble ,on top of this many people are spraying for mosquito`s ,with drastic effects .

So much follows the insects in the food chains ,that we can expect a lot of very bad changes in the environment .

And now many animals are becoming sick because of changes in temperature ,

Only time will tell what is in store for us ,and that time is running now .

Everything is happening so fast it is not possible to monitor events any more

Answer 6

It throws the food chain out of wak. The animal that dies off then had to be replaced by something that the eating animal didn't normally eat and that affects other animals as well.

Answer 7

Some animals are keystone animals, and if we lose on of them, other species of animals and plants depend on them and without them the environment would become out of control.