“Protect our species”, is the motto chosen by the UN for the celebration of Earth Day 2019, on April 22, in the framework of biodiversity in our privileged blue planet.

Talking about biodiversity and species protection, without considering their recent demographic history, at least some of them, would be an incomplete work. But if we wanted to include all those that have diminished their population, the subject would be so deep and extensive that it would give to write a work of several volumes. That’s how serious the question is.

According to a report by WWF.org, which we took from the newspaper The Guardian, of 10-30-2018, entitled the world population of vertebrates decreases by 60% since 1970. That is, populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles they have been reduced by an average of 60% between 1970 and 2014. The main threats are “directly related to human activities, including loss and degradation of habitat and overexploitation of wild fisheries”, says the NGO. The report also raises “the need to reach a global agreement by nature”. “We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff” said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF.

This news is alarming, but more alarming is that it went under the table, a table served with the most exquisite and varied food dishes such as sports, showbiz, varieties, fashion, gourmet cuisine, pornography and other content of a superfluous menu that enchants most of the diners, who consume them avidly while rejecting the tragedy that most animals are living. Nor do they realize the serious problem that is coming, that will not take long to arrive.

We recognize that it makes you want to vomit to see images or videos that register groups of elephants or badly mutilated rhinos, thrown on the ground, dead or still dying, draining blood spurts through the holes that the anti-human plunderers have left them, by ripping off their “precious” pieces, like ivory tusks or horns with supposed medicinal benefits, the white gold that is devastating these helpless victims, before human avidity and superiority.

It is also disgusting to see the blood lakes around seals or dolphins killed by sticks on the shores or beaches, by these neo-Neanderthals, with the forgiveness of the original Neanderthals, who hunted in groups only to obtain their food, not as these now that send to kill to gather fortunes.

It causes pain and stress to watch the whaling ships chasing for hours these huge stylized figure cetaceans until they are completely exhausted and thus be able to harpoon them, sinking into their flesh their great power explosive charges. After the whale is dead, its body is swiftly boarded and cut into pieces with great dexterity, while whale blood cataracts are returned to the blue ocean.

We have declared an asymmetric war against animals, a conflagration that we believe to be “winning”, but that in the end we will lose, unless we learn to live in equilibrium with other species. We have learned to easily kill even the most voluminous species in a cruel and irrational battle in which the victim has no chance of defending himself to survive. We can liquidate species hundreds of times bigger and heavier than we are, thanks to our “ability” and engineering of our weapons and take them to the limits of their extermination or their total disappearance.

No species is extinguished overnight, in terms of human chronometry. For us the extinction of a species is a slow, gradual, almost imperceptible process, and indeed in the cities it is not perceived, but the process exists, it is fast, and it is accelerating.

The extinction of a species is determined by the rate of decline of its population, a process that can last for decades or centuries, depending on several factors. But what are decades or centuries measured in geological or evolutionary times? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. In the scale of geo-temporal measurement is the instantaneous disappearance of one or many species by the sapiens, which concludes with the death of the last individual on all of Earth.

To the rapid decrease of vertebrate populations, we must add something fulminant yet, because it covers all species. It is and its consequence, climate change, which are crescendo in a constant and unstoppable rite, since for now they have not been able to be stopped. It is the countdown towards a massive extinction of species that we must take very seriously, because, we repeat, from this chaos of deconstruction of the biological equilibrium system we will not be able to save ourselves either. Conscious homo sapiens must make extraordinary efforts to stop it before it is too late.

Be this Earth Day-2019 good to begin to pay more attention and get involved in the serious problem that already touches our faces.

Sandor Alejandro Gerendas-Kiss