Wikipedia - Over 50% of the world's species are estimated to be at risk of extinction,[8] but the frontier between categories such as 'endangered', 'rare', or 'locally extinct' species is often difficult to draw given the general paucity of data on most of these species. This is notably the case in the world Ocean where endangered species not seen for decades may go extinct unnoticed.[9]
Until about 25 years ago, I was a dedicated Post-WWII industrial farmer. I made my living by exclusively producing one species of product for the market. The monoculture that I produced was beef cattle. I was good at it.
I killed anything that I found in my pastures (by poisoning them) unless it was a cow or plant species that I found acceptable for my cattle. Any other plant, or animal, or microbe that I detected in my pastures was my enemy. I killed them intentionally. In doing so, I unintentionally killed other ecosystem inhabitants, many of which were beneficial. Also in doing this, I contributed to endangering my share of ecosystem species.
Over time, I radically changed my belief about this topic. I now believe that any native species that lives in my pastures is part of the Natural System that helps to produce The Abundance. The Abundance is the only true source of wealth that we possess. All of that oil, natural gas, and coal that has powered our universe for the last century is part of The Abundance that accumulated on this planet during the era of the dinosaur. Sadly, we have exploited the Hell out of this abundance for the last hundred or so years.
While we were living on these accumulated fossil fuels, we blindly mined the organic matter that had accumulated in our topsoil. My ancestors and I did this by industrially farming our Georgia soil for about a century. During that period, we reduced the organic matter of our soil to about a tenth of what it had historically been. We used industrial farming practices such as tillage, fertilizer, and pesticides to turn a living productive soil into a dead mineral medium.
I became very good at spotting any species of plant, animal, or microbe that I believed was adverse to my money crop, beef cattle. I developed the skill of knowing what pesticides would kill any species that I thought was adversely affecting my monoculture of beef cattle.
According to Wikipedia - Pesticides are substances that are meant to control pests. This includes herbicide, insecticide, nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide, rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent, microbicide, fungicide, and lampricide.
What I was not told by the pesticide companies that manufactured and sold these poisons is that they also killed other species of plants, or animals, or microbes. That each of these species had a role in the Natural Order of life in my fields. And that when I annihilated the target, it triggered an imbalance that required me to spend money on a different pesticide to kill what the previous one had thrown off of balance. And so on. And so on. And so on...
I hope that a lot of others will figure this out. It's long overdue.
