"Shifting baseline syndrome" causes us to underestimate long-term biodiversity loss.

The Sixth Extinction is unique as humans are driving global species homogenization.

Human-driven extinctions compare to the most destructive events known from the fossil record.

It's not all doom-and-gloom, but it's going to take a lot of hard work to right the many wrongs.

It's surely not breaking news that we are ruining our lovely planet including air and water at an unprecedented rate. It can seem hopeless, but some people are offering a way out of what is called the Anthropocene—"the age of humanity"—that has morphed into what I call "the rage of inhumanity."

One such person is Dr. Kyle Harper who suggests a way to right the many wrongs in his highly-acclaimed new book The Last Animal: Human History and the Fate of Life on Earth from the Ice Age to the Sixth Extinction. In this important forward-looking book, Harper doesn't think the situation is necessarily a doom and gloom scenario; there is hope, but it going to take a lot of hard work. Putting the grand sweep of world history into geological perspective, Harper argues that the long view is essential to confronting the urgent challenges we face.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write The Last Animal?

Kyle Harper: Like anybody who spends years working on a project, I was motivated by a mix of personal and intellectual interests. The personal one comes from a concern about biodiversity. I grew up in Oklahoma and am now raising my kids here. But the animal world around them is notably different than the one I experienced as a child. The change is rapid and visible to the naked eye. To give one small example, I could (and did) catch Texas horned lizards with my grandfather at will. We saw them all the time. My kids have never seen one.

As........

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