Countdown to Extinction

Book excerpt: Today, there are over 6.5 billion people in the world. Together, we take up more space, eat more food and create more waste than any other form of life. Human dominance may be good news for us, but it's bad news for many other animals that share the planet with us. David Burnie looks atextinction from the mass wipe-out of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, to the probable extinction of the tiger within the next ten years. He covers many species from the cuddly and much-loved panda to the less attractive thylacine, classed as vermin but no less valuable to the ecological balanceof the planet. All sorts of animals are represented, from the feathered and winged to the slimy and scaly.