Murch Auditorium at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Friday, September 5, 2014; 9 am to 4 pm
$15 per person (if purchased before August 30, 2014)
Registration and info
The Northeast Ohio Sierra Club is a sponsor of this symposium.
For as long as there has been life on Earth, there has been extinction. It is estimated that more than 99.9 percent of all species that ever lived are extinct. Modern biodiversity represents the sum of the survivors.
Five times before in the planet’s history, mass extinction events have swept away swaths of species. Now, the rate of extinction is escalating again, evidence that a sixth mass extinction is underway.
What’s different is that this one is human-caused. Through overfishing, hunting, habitat destruction, pollution, introducing invasive species and the explosive growth of our own population, humanity has broken down ecosystems around the planet. It’s estimated that 12 to 52 percent of species within well-studied groups of organisms are threatened with extinction.