"At
the present time, about 100,000 species of plants
animals and microorganisms are known to be native
to the United States. Of these, as the recent survey
published by the Nature Conservancy from the best
databases available shows, it is apparent that about
1% are extinct. I suspect it is more than that because
it is hard to track all the rare species that may
have gone extinct in earlier times. About 1% has
gone extinct and 1/3 are in some degree of endangerment,
much of it due to the continued removal of America’s
Ancient Forests and other critical habitat.
Now
when you cut a forest, an Ancient Forest in particular,
you are not just removing a lot of big trees and
a few birds fluttering around in the canopy. You
are removing or drastically imperiling a vast array
of species even within a few square miles of you.
The number of these species may go to tens of thousands.
Many of them, the very smallest of them, are still
unknown to science, and science has not yet discovered
the key role undoubtedly played in the maintenance
of that ecosystem, as in the case of fungi, microorganisms,
and many of the insects.
They
have been a symbol in these habitats, literally
over millions of years of evolution. They are exquisitely
adapted to these habitats. That is how the balance
has been maintained.
That
is a balance that has been severely affected by
these new procedures of extensive lumbering that
humanity has introduced."
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