The collective action of humans - developing and paving over the landscape, clear-cutting forests, polluting rivers and streams, altering the atmosphere's protective ozone layer, and populating nearly every place imaginable - are bringing an end to the lives of creatures across the Earth. Extinction of biological species is not necessarily a phenomenon initiated by human activity, some argue. Although the specific role of extinction in the process of evolution is still being researched and debated, …showed first 75 words of 1951 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1951 total…to care for, has not held its own against the view of nature as something to exploit. We have reached our present dilemma: Now we must balance the need to protect and maintain what is left of California's once renowned biodiversity against the need to care for the well-being of its human population. Yet protecting nature is no longer merely an option; the survival of humanity depends on the survival of our cohabitants on Earth.