I know I’ve listed this statistic before, but it is now 10 years old. BBC just published this updated study and, as you may have guessed, it seems the situation has worsened.

The Red List of Threatened Species says populations of more than half of mammalian species are falling, with Asian primates particularly at risk.

The biggest threat to mammals is loss of habitat, including deforestation.

Loss of habitat is of course due to human activity. Drilling, minning, deforesting, agriculture, livestock, vaccuming the oceans – building subdivisions, parking lots, stripmalls, golf courses, airports, immigration walls…..and so on.

This may be an under-estimate, the authors caution, as there is not enough data to make an assessment in more than 800 cases. The true figure could be nearer to one- third.

“Within our lifetime, hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live,” said Julia Marton-Lefevre, director-general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which publishes the Red List.

This is an interesting map. I wish we could see different versions of it through the last 500 years though. Even the differences within the last 200 years, 100 years, would be shocking in and of itself.

Live Science just came out with a list from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List identifying “Ten Species You Can Kiss Goodbye.” The following species have been labeled as “critically endangered,” which means that each is expected to go extinct in the next ten years.

10. California Condor

9. Sumatran Orangutan

8. Ganges Shark

7. Mountain Gorilla

6. Philippine Crocodile

5. Black-footed Ferret (In Arizona)

4. Siberian Tiger

3. Red Wolf

2. Western Gray Whale

1. Sumatran Rhinoceros

If you go to the site, there are pictures and descriptions of each of these animals. Loss of species is, of course, nothing new.

Scientists estimate that the current rate at which species are becoming extinct is between 100 and 1,000 times greater than the normal “background” extinction rate – and say this is all due to human activity.

Check out this site too.

NEW DELHI, India, February 13, 2008 (ENS) India has lost more than half of its tiger population in the past five years, a new government tiger census shows. Crunching the numbers for its 2006-2007 census, the National Tiger Conservation Authority estimates the population at between 1,165 and 1,657 tigers.

At the last census in 2002, observers counted 3,642 tigers across India.

And meanwhile, this is going on as well: Poaching in Sumatra, now more than ever.

Save this picture, so you can explain to your grandchildren what a tiger was. Tell them, of course, to imagine it without a collar.

I remember the first time I heard about this. It sounded straight out of a science fiction novel. I can see it now. By the end of the book, the existence of human clones eliminates natural conception altogether and, ultimately, touching of any kind is made illegal.

But seriously, there has to be a logical explanation here; one that explains exactly how this could have happened. I mean a survey in 2005 by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that two-thirds of US consumers were “uncomfortable” with animal cloning; nearly half believed food from clones would be unsafe to eat.

(I’m a bit more than “uncomfortable” about it myself…)

“The FDA based their decision on an incomplete and flawed review that relies on studies supplied by cloning companies that want to force cloning technology on American consumers.”

Oh right, of course. Still, more questions persist. I mean, who are these cows, these pigs? Who are their parents? How will we view their lives? What are we to make of the notion that we have “cloned” life into this world, not actually to give it a life, but to exploit and kill it?

”Well as far as I know, there’s no difference between a cloned cow and a bred cow,” Regan said.

If you read between the lines of this ABC article, you would infer that this guy, farmer Frank Regan, was so inspired by the checks he received for his “four-time Iowa fair winner and top-quality milk producer,” that he immediately gave a bunch of money to a cloning company and PRESTO! Now he has three cows! Of course farmer Frank doesn’t see any difference between a cloned cow and a bred cow…they were never really cows to him in the first place.

Here are the major real-world problems with cloning animals for human consumption, as preached from under the concrete. Yes, malnutrition and poverty is a growing problem. But it’s not because of a lack of food. The problem lies in the way we use and distribute available food.

Most of the world’s food is already grown to feed livestock, the very livestock they’re cloning more of. Most of the water available goes to water fields of food for livestock.

Further, basic real-world economics tells us that when there is an abundance of food present, the population will continue to grow. The human population exploded with the advent of the agricultural revolution, which was the first time we were able to produce and store more food than we needed. The word “revolution” makes it all sound like it was some kind of event though. It’s as if it already happened. But we are still in the midst of the agricultural revolution. And soon we will see the end of it.

As the human population continues to grow, more and more farmland will be needed to feed all these animals for all these people (and to power their vehicles). If the whole world ate prime rib the way we do, there would be nothing left.

This is just another symptom of our culture’s death urge.

I didn’t mean for this post to come off like the film, Rosemary’s Baby or anything. You know, oddly upbeat and innocent in the beginning, then eerie and ponderous at the end? I mean, the film just left you hanging in that weirdness. We don’t get to see Rosemary’s Teenager do we? Wouldn’t it shatter someone to raise Satan’s baby, especially someone like Rosemary?!?

Maybe it would be a lot like a mother cow trying to raise a cloned replica of the cow in the cage next to her. Maybe not. I’m not a cow.