Extinction: A Global History

In the past five centuries, about 800 species of animals and plants have gone extinct, the majority of them in the last one hundred years. Recent estimates suggest that 41 percent of described amphibians, 26 percent of mammals, and 13 percent of birds currently face the threat of extinction. We will examine the current global extinction crisis as a biological, historical, cultural, economic, and political phenomenon. This course adopts an interdisciplinary approach by examining the issue of extinctions from the perspectives of the humanities and environmental sciences.