Australian Wildfires Ravage, Koalas Face Functional Extinction – Will Humans Face a Similar Fate?

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Recently, wildfires in Australia have frequently topped the trending searches.According to statistics, Australia's national treasure 'koala' has lost at least 20,000 due to the wildfires, and has fallen into the state of 'functional extinction'.

Koala, also known as the tree kangaroo, has always been beloved by people worldwide; at the same time, this species has become an endangered animal.

Before this wildfire, official statistics showed that the koala population was only left with 43,000, and 20,000 have perished in the fire; this number may still increase.

We just talked about 'functional extinction,' which may not be clear to many people.'Functional extinction' refers to when a species' habitat is completely destroyed, and the number of individuals is at a critically endangered level, so the remaining survival environment can no longer support the continuation of the species.

From this definition, 'functional extinction' is essentially equivalent to 'species extinction.' If a species has no habitat left, it naturally cannot continue to survive, and extinction will become a matter of time.

In addition to koalas, species such as the South China tiger and finless porpoise are also falling into functional extinction; for these species, many scientists even find it difficult to determine whether they have already gone extinct.

Taking the finless porpoise as an example, it generally lives in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River; in the early 1980s, the number of finless porpoises had plummeted to more than 400; in the following years, in 1986, it reached 300; in 2002, scientists estimated that 'the existing finless porpoises were less than 50;' in 2006, they were basically not seen in the wild; scientists suspected that they were extinct.'

In modern society, 'environmental protection' and 'animal protection' are frequently mentioned; this is not alarmist.

The dodo is a bird species that lives on Mauritius Island; in the 15th century, humans discovered this species on the island; just two hundred years later, the once numerous dodos disappeared in the human hunt in 1681.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, 25 animals were extinct in 200 years; this is because human damage to the environment was not as severe as it is today.

However, from the 19th to the 20th centuries, this number reached 78; to this day, the rate of species extinction cannot be measured in 'centuries,' but in 'minutes'.

The extinction rate of plants and animals is getting faster and faster; no matter how many species there are, they cannot withstand disappearing at such a speed.

When all species are endangered, people at that time may also be in 'functional extinction'.

All living things are on the same earth; when one species excessively occupies the survival environment of other species, it will inevitably cause disruption of the ecosystem; and when this disruption cannot be recovered by the earth, all life will inevitably face the same future.

Original author: Li Peng“”