Court on Mount High is an invigorating novelette that will inflame and mobilize a passion for the animal kingdom and the environment which we mutually inhabit. The characters, acting upon a driving need for change, evoke a universal hope for the future.
I could not have slept to-night if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on the ground.
One day when we meet our Creator, we will be asked, “How did you treat the creatures that I created on Earth?” Then, we will all finally be animal rights advocates. And, one day when we meet our Creator, we will be asked, “How did you treat the planet Earth that I created?” Then, we will all finally be environmentalists and conservationists. --- Amos
The Extinction Rate of Species from www.whole-system.org:
1. Edward Wilson estimates 27,000 species are currently lost per year. By 2022, 22% of all species will be extinct if no action is taken.
2. Niles Eldridge estimates 30,000 per year currently.
3. Georgina M. Mace using a different methodology based on extrapolations from the current lists of endangered species arrives at a figure of 14-22% loss of species and subspecies over the next 100 years.
4. Paul Ehrlich, using another approach based on total energy use estimates extinction rates at 7,000 to 13,000 times the background rate, (70,000 to 130,000 species per year) which he says is higher than figures based on data for higher orders of animal indicates, but we have little data on insects and micro flora and fauna.
Books:
Wilson, Edward O. The diversity of Life, The Belknap Press of Harvard university press, Cambridge, Mass.1992. A classic
Baskin, Yvonne, The Work of Nature, Island Press, 1998. A very fascinating account of the interrelationships that make an ecosystem work.
Eldridge, Niles, Life in the Balance humanity and the Biodiversity Crisis Princeton university Press, Princeton 1998
Lawton, John H. & May, Robert M., Editors, Extinction Rates, Oxford University Press, 1995. An academic treatment of the techniques of population estimating. –Whole Systems Foundation