On January 1st of this year the last Hawaiian tree snail died. His name was George. He had spent his entire life in a terrarium, and researchers were unable to find a mate. George, by the way, was named for Lonesome George, a Pinta Island tortoise from the Galapagos, the last of his kind, who died in 2012.
In February the Australian government declared the Bramble Cay melomys to be extinct. It was a small mammal found on a single island between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Its extinction is blamed on climate change.
In April China announced the last known female Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle died.
In the last 50 years the human population has doubled. The size of the global economy has quadrupled. Global trade has increased ten times in that period. To feed, clothe, and provide the luxury goods all those people demand, we are destroying the global environment. The three main components to that process are habitat destruction, over fishing, and the biggie–global warming.
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