Extinction

Resident Evil: Extinction, the video-game-based film that opens today and stars Milla Jovovich, was not screened for critics. See photos from Resident Evil: Extinction at baltimoresun.com/evil

Here is an excerpt of an editorial from the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, which was published Monday.THE BALD eagle's impending exit from the protected species list is surely something to celebrate, not least for the symbolism of the achievement. But let there be no mistaking the rarity of this victory over the forces of extinction, or the enormity of loss to which it makes exception.Contemporary climate change linked to greenhouse gas emissions is already showing dramatic harm to corals and some other coastal plants and birds.

One scientist has called it man's "brush with extinction."Genetic studies have provided new evidence suggesting that early humans, or their immediate ancestors, were nearly wiped out by a calamity that struck in Africa within the past million years.The event -- an epidemic, perhaps, or a natural disaster or series of them -- may have killed off all but a few hundred or a thousand of their numbers.So few were left to repopulate the Earth, researchers say, that the human race today is left with less genetic diversity than even small communities of chimpanzees now living in Africa.

The following article is taken from the Worldwatch Institute's "State of the World, 1998," released last weekend.The biodiversity around us today is the result of more than 3 billion years of evolution. Species declines and extinctions have always been a natural part of that process, but there is something disturbingly different about the current extinction patterns.Examinations of the fossil record of marine invertebrates suggest that the natural or "background" rate of extinctions -- the rate that has prevailed over millions of years of evolutionary time -- claims something on the order of one to three species per year.

When the first Fells Point Fun Festival was held in 1967, the neighborhood was being threatened with extinction -- the East-West Expressway was supposed to run right through the waterfront community, forcing the leveling of many of its 18th-century rowhouses.This weekend, as Baltimore's oldest neighborhood celebrates its 31st Fun Festival, it faces a threat of a different kind. Three of the community's historic structures -- the London Coffee House, George Wells House and Miller's Wharf warehouse -- face demolition by the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. subsidiary that owns them.

THE GUY IN the jaunty blue bandanna is as familiar a presence on East Baltimore Street as the flashing nude silhouette above the Two O'Clock Club.He's worked around the strip clubs for two decades, since he was 17. He used to be a doorman, calling "check it out, check it out" to the nightly crowds of fraternity boys, sailors, out-of-town businessmen. These days, he runs errands for the dancers, gets them cigarettes and sandwiches. He's grown philosophical, even nostalgic, about The Block.

YOU CAN'T FOOL Mother Nature, the saying goes. But you can fool around with her.And humans have been fooling around with nature for centuries, particularly since the dawn of the Industrial Age. Humans pollute the air, mow down forests, cover the land with the concrete of roads, replace the natural skyline with skyscrapers, scoop fish out of the oceans, and dump fertilizer and pesticides all over the place.The problem with all this, many scientists say, is that humans aren't the earth's sole inhabitants.

BROADWAY, Va. -- Sometimes I'm alarmed by the judgments I hear people make. But sometimes what troubles me is not the conclusion they reach so much as the ease with which they come to their judgments, as if it were an open-and-shut case. That's how it was on a recent "This Week" program on ABC.As the gang discussed Vice President Gore's trip to China, the conservative pundit William Kristol complained about Mr. Gore's having conceded that, while China's blot is the massacre at Tiananmen Square, the United States, too, has committed great wrongs.

For the first time, scientists are saying that some species of ocean fish and invertebrates are reaching low levels where extinction becomes a real possibility.Their contention is prompting a fierce scientific debate, which could intensify with the addition next month of more than 100 species of ocean fish to the World Conservation Union's influential "red list" of creatures whose existence is endangered.But until now, only a handful of marine organisms have been placed on the list along with thousands of terrestrial and freshwater creatures.

Houston -- The world's hugely mismanaged efforts to ''protect threatened and endangered species'' are going off the tracks again; the focal point at the moment is African elephants.Millions (mostly resident in developed nations) regard themselves as ''animal-rights activists;'' they are horrified that the thoughtless, uncontrolled spread of Homo sapiens should rob any species of its habitat and drive it to extinction.These are noble sentiments. The trouble is that the people who voice them know little about the animals involved except what they've seen on The Discovery Channel -- and they don't have to live near them.

Amphibians are going extinct around the globe. As a scientist specializing in frogs, I have watched dozens of species of these creatures die out. The extinction of frogs and salamanders might seem unimportant, but this couldn't be further from the truth. These animals regulate their local ecosystems, consume and control populations of mosquitoes and other insects that spread disease, and potentially point the way to new drugs for fighting diseases such as cancer and HIV-AIDS. Their fate is inexorably linked to our own. The biggest danger to most species today is habitat loss.

Resident Evil: Extinction, the video-game-based film that opens today and stars Milla Jovovich, was not screened for critics. See photos from Resident Evil: Extinction at baltimoresun.com/evil

Tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis: Mother Nature seems to have it in for our world these days. In a way, though, we live in a relatively peaceful time. While it's no comfort to those hurting or grieving now, Earth saw far greater catastrophes in its long and troubled past. The planet has been frozen, roasted, smothered, battered, shaken and half-drowned. Entire species have been obliterated. So far, fortunately, that doesn't include Homo sapiens, but we've had a close call.

Autism 5.5 of every 1,000 children diagnosed About 300,000 U.S. children have been diagnosed with autism, according to the largest national study so far of the prevalence of this complex behavioral disorder. That means about 5.5 out of every 1,000 school-age children have been diagnosed with the condition. Past estimates have ranged from 1 to 9 out of every 1,000 children, based on smaller studies in individual states or cities. The government-run study released yesterday reports findings from national surveys of tens of thousands of families.

A devastating fungus is sweeping the planet, wiping out entire populations of amphibians at such a rate that biologists are helping pull together a huge "Noah's Ark" project to capture frogs, toads and salamanders and put them in safe places. Various factors already have combined to cause more than 120 amphibian species to vanish since 1980, in what one biologist has called "one of the largest extinction spasms for vertebrates in history." A third of the world's nearly 6,000 amphibian species are threatened - their populations weak and susceptible to disease.

WASHINGTON - The Arctic Council's recent report on the effects of global warming in the far north paints a grim picture: global floods, extinction of polar bears and other marine mammals, collapsed fisheries. But it ignored a ticking time bomb buried in the Arctic tundra. There are enormous quantities of naturally occurring greenhouse gasses trapped in ice-like structures in the cold northern muds and at the bottom of the seas. These ices, called clathrates, contain 3,000 times as much methane as is in the atmosphere.

WINTER HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS Read today's special section on winter high school sports, and go online to find schedules, photo galleries, archived photos and more. www.baltimoresun.com/highschool HEALTH & SCIENCE Visit our online Health & Science gallery and see a video of Sun science writer David Kohn discussing his story from today's section about species extinction. www.baltimoresun.com/healthscience

What ever happened to the White Warty Back? The Lined Pocketbook? The Coosa Elk Toe? That's what Arthur Bogan wants to know. For 18 years, he's been looking for these creatures - all species of freshwater mussel that were once plentiful in Southeastern rivers and streams. Bogan has looked all over, without success, and suspects the species are extinct, victims of pollution, and dams that choke the bivalves with silt. But looking for mussels is tricky work. Bogan sometimes snorkels, or uses a glass-bottomed bucket.

Some thoughts on oysters, and the unthinkable. In the natural resources world, there's hardly a nastier word than "moratorium" - you can't catch or hunt something you've always considered your birthright. For game and fish managers, a ban is equally harsh. It means they failed in their jobs. No one likes a moratorium. But there's a nastier word - extinction. It's why we've bitten the bullet and had moratoriums three times in Maryland in recent decades. The first ban came on American shad, whose harvests had fallen by 1980 to about 1 percent of historic levels.

Scientists say they have found the place where an asteroid or comet smashed into Earth 250 million years ago and may have triggered the largest extinction in history, setting the stage for the appearance of dinosaurs and eventually humans. The object created the Bedout crater in a rise of the ocean floor about 120 miles northwest of Australia, researchers say. They say their analysis of the glass and minerals found at key sites in Antarctica and Australia and dug out of the crater, at depths of 10,000 feet, show that the object hit at the same time as the planet began the largest-scale extinction in its history.