TROPICAL RAINFORESTS: Disappearing Opportunities
Alfred Wallace on Biodiversity Loss
Concerns over biodversity loss are not new. Alfred Wallace, the great biogeographer naturalist, took note of the Late Quarternary Extinction (as some have taken to calling our current campaign of species obliteration) as he studied the fauna of Indonesia in the late nineteenth century. In his Island Life (1881) he wrote:The kind of knowledge [of world flora and fauna] is of very slow growth,
and it is still very imperfect; and in many cases it can never now be obtained, owing to the reckless destruction
of forests, and with them of countless species of plants and animals.
Continued: Extinction