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Human destruction and disruption of the natural world have sped up the natural rate of species extinction by at least 100 times. A recent study found that globally billions of populations of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians have been lost in recent decades with habitat destruction as the leading cause, now exacerbated by global warming. They referred to the massive loss of wildlife as “biological annihilation.”

Here in “Super, Natural B.C.,” we often celebrate our biological richness and spectacular landscapes. Many of us hang on to the belief that things are not so bad in our neck of the woods, despite the fact that 1,900 B.C. species are at risk of disappearing.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Jens Wieting and Torrance Coste: Logging B.C.'s ancient forests adds to extinctions Back to video

For a reality check, consider this: Vancouver Island’s remaining intact rainforest is being destroyed three times faster than the remaining Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, acted immediately to open large areas of the Amazon rainforest to industry, including in protected territories of Indigenous peoples. This puts at risk the 80 per cent of the rainforest that remains standing. In the last 25 years, nearly 10 per cent of the rainforest has been destroyed, falling to 3.3 million square kilometres last year compared to 3.7 million sq. km in 1993.