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Anonymous
(CNN) -- The complex web of life on Earth, what scientists call \"biodiversity,\" is in serious trouble.
\"Biodiversity includes all living things that we depend on for our economies and our lives,\" explained Brooks Yeager, vice president of global programs at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C.
\"It\'s the forests, the oceans, the coral reefs, the marine fish, the algae, the insects that make up the living world around us and which we couldn\'t do without,\" he said.
Nearly 2 million species of plants and animals are known to science and experts say 50 times as many may not yet be discovered.
Yet most scientists agree that human activity is causing rapid deterioration in biodiversity. Expanding human settlements, logging, mining, agriculture and pollution are destroying ecosystems, upsetting nature\'s balance and driving many species to extinction.
There is virtual unanimity among scientists that we have entered a period of mass extinction not seen since the age of the dinosaurs, an emerging global crisis that could have disastrous effects on our future food supplies, our search for new medicines, and on the water we drink and the air we breathe. Estimates vary, but extinction is figured by experts to be taking place between 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural \"background\" extinction.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/23/green.century.mass.extinction/index.html
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