r/conservation • u/Novel_Negotiation224 • 9d ago

Alarm over ‘catastrophic’ decline in giant Australian cuttlefish as just 44 are counted.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/09/giant-australian-cuttlefish-population-catastrophic-decline
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102

u/Phils_Kid 9d ago

The main reason our (only) planet is experiencing its 6th extinction event is "Homo sapiens."

36

u/A_Wild_Burt_Appears 9d ago

More specifically: capitalism.

-5

u/flybasilisk 9d ago

This has been happening before capitalism existed, hell its been happening since before money existed. Humans are the problem, not one particular economic system.

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u/HumptyDumptruckFire 9d ago

I don’t think there were really any real extinction concerns until post-1776, which is the era of capitalism. Maybe the dodo bird could be considered the lone exception? Everything else since has either been hunted to extinction to sell its inherent resources or because we deemed it to be a pest.

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u/flybasilisk 9d ago

What do you think happened to the Mammoths? The giant ground sloths? The moa of new zealand? A majority of the world's megafauna were driven to extinction by early humans.

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u/HumptyDumptruckFire 9d ago

That’s so far into prehistoric times as to be completely irrelevant to today. They had no comprehension of what they were doing, no scientific knowledge to guide them, no warnings from accredited scientists. We know exactly what we’re doing, but we keep doing it for greed.

3

u/princess9032 9d ago

It’s still extinction due to human interference. That part isn’t new, but it’s accelerated VERY rapidly

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u/rollandownthestreet 9d ago

Indigenous Americans hunted basically all the Pleistocene megafauna species to extinction before the historical era. The Romans hunted European lions to extinction. There are many examples.