Endangered Species

Some 1 million species are threatened with extinction in coming decades — about one-quarter of all plant and animal species on Earth, according to scientists. Deforestation and other habitat destruction, climate change and invasive species are among the main drivers accelerating extinction, experts say, in addition to hunting and overfishing. Although some species are adapting to climate change, most scientists say human-caused changes are happening too fast for many to survive. Environmentalists hail the Endangered Species Act for saving some iconic species, but say it works too slowly. Conservatives criticize this law for imposing heavy penalties on property owners who find endangered species on their land. On the frontiers of science, some researchers seek to rescue endangered species by cloning them from frozen tissue. A few biologists want to use genetic techniques to revive long-extinct species such as the woolly mammoth — but that raises fears of introducing an alien species into a changed environment.