Biodiversity Crisis: We May Have Entered the First Major Mass Extinction Event

@COASTTOCOASTAMOFFICIAL Scientist, author, lecturer, and species explorer, Quentin Wheeler, has named more than 100 species new to science and published more than 175 scientific papers. He revealed why he believes we have entered the first major mass extinction event since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. According to Wheeler, species are going extinct hundreds to thousands of times faster than in prehistory. Climate change and the use of pesticides in agriculture are factors in the insect decline, he continued. While there is hard data on the extinction of some 500 plant species and 700 vertebrate animal species, that can be extrapolated to the loss of around 20,000 species per year, he suggested. However, with 10 million species to work with, “there’s still time to take steps to minimize the number that we ultimately think it’s critical that we complete an inventory of life on Earth so that we know what we have lost,“ he added. Wheeler said that thi