From 'microjewel' snails to the magnificent Tok Belang, the
past year marks another sad chapter in the tale of our country's vanishing
biodiversity.Among the many subplots of humanity's great symphonic rise to power and domination here on Earth is the pathetic wheeze that represents the depletion of the planet's biodiversity.
While extinction of species is more or less expected in the
grand narrative of evolution, there's something truly disturbing about the natural
world's recent decline.As revealed in Elizabeth Kolbert's latest book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, humanity has become the biggest driver of what some scientists are calling the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid.
- It's the first time in Earth's history that a single organism has managed to overwhelm the ecology to such a degree that we're not just making it hostile to other creatures but also ourselves.
'Microjewels'
This mass extinction was brought close to home when the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List - a list that
tracks threatened species across the planet - was updated this year.
In its evaluation of 76,199 species, which represents only about 4 per cent of 1.8 million species known to science, it's deemed that 2,413 are under threat. Meanwhile, 28 were added to the list of extinct species.
Sadly, a tiny, rare snail named Plectostoma sciaphilum that was endemic to Malaysia was among the 28.
Part of a family of snails that scientists have called "microjewels" for their delicately formed shells and minute size, Plectosoma sciaphilum used to live on the side of Bukit Pancing, a 300m limestone hill in Pahang.
The snail apparently found its ecological niche on the hill, living and evolving there in relative isolation for millennia.
Then, between 2003 and 2007, YTL Cement arrived with TNT and excavators and levelled the entire hill. Since the snail can be found nowhere else but on Bukit Pancing - the hill is now a lake - it's assumed that, like the dodo and the West African black rhino, Plectostoma sciaphilum is gone forever.
The fight is now on to save fellow snail Charopa lafargei, which can be found only on Gunung Kanthan in Perak, currently being quarried by Lafarge.
Despite pleas from environmental groups to save the limestone hill - it's also home to a trapdoor spider, Liphistius kanthan, also found nowhere else - half of it is already gone.
The snails' plight brings up an important point about our knowledge of species under threat. Most of the time we don't even know that they're there.
A lot of animals look alike at first glance, but DNA testing reveals them to be distinct species or sub-species unique to a specific area. And they're also not easy to count.
In its evaluation of 76,199 species, which represents only about 4 per cent of 1.8 million species known to science, it's deemed that 2,413 are under threat. Meanwhile, 28 were added to the list of extinct species.
Sadly, a tiny, rare snail named Plectostoma sciaphilum that was endemic to Malaysia was among the 28.
Part of a family of snails that scientists have called "microjewels" for their delicately formed shells and minute size, Plectosoma sciaphilum used to live on the side of Bukit Pancing, a 300m limestone hill in Pahang.
The snail apparently found its ecological niche on the hill, living and evolving there in relative isolation for millennia.
Then, between 2003 and 2007, YTL Cement arrived with TNT and excavators and levelled the entire hill. Since the snail can be found nowhere else but on Bukit Pancing - the hill is now a lake - it's assumed that, like the dodo and the West African black rhino, Plectostoma sciaphilum is gone forever.
The fight is now on to save fellow snail Charopa lafargei, which can be found only on Gunung Kanthan in Perak, currently being quarried by Lafarge.
Despite pleas from environmental groups to save the limestone hill - it's also home to a trapdoor spider, Liphistius kanthan, also found nowhere else - half of it is already gone.
The snails' plight brings up an important point about our knowledge of species under threat. Most of the time we don't even know that they're there.
A lot of animals look alike at first glance, but DNA testing reveals them to be distinct species or sub-species unique to a specific area. And they're also not easy to count.
Tok Belang and Sang Kancil
Ask any Malaysian what the national animal is and most will
tell you - correctly - that it's the Malayan tiger, the smallest of the six
remaining sub-species of one of the world's most beautiful cats and completely endemic
to the Malay Peninsula.
And yet when news came out in September that the Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni) had drastically dropped in numbers - from an estimated 500 in 2007, to current estimates of between 250 and 340 individuals, down from an estimated 3,000 in the 1950s - hardly anyone seem surprised.
And yet when news came out in September that the Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni) had drastically dropped in numbers - from an estimated 500 in 2007, to current estimates of between 250 and 340 individuals, down from an estimated 3,000 in the 1950s - hardly anyone seem surprised.
Source: AsiaOne, The Star
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