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Posted: 2019-05-06T10:13:21Z | Updated: 2019-05-06T16:06:23Z

In her first conservation job, Ashley Dayer watched a species go extinct. Its a picture that haunts me, she told HuffPost.

When she arrived in Maui in 2001, there were only three known Poouli birds left in existence. The drab, brown honeycreepers werent the flashiest of Hawaiis animals, but they were unique in their preference for dining on snails, and Dayer was on a team making a last-ditch effort to save them. It was too late. The last known bird was brought into captivity, where it died. Its now a museum specimen, Dayer, now an assistant professor in Virginia Techs department of fish and wildlife conservation, recalled sadly. I never want to watch another species go extinct.

She described Hawaii as the extinction capital of the world. People feel really removed from that. Theyre like, Oh, thats not really going to happen. Its happening, in Hawaii, now! This is our country and we have an extinction crisis.

Indeed, there is an extinction crisis the world over.

A 2019 global analysis of the state of nature , compiled by 150 experts from 50 countries, paints a stark and harrowing picture of species loss over the past 50 years. The United Nations-backed study from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform On Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, published Monday, shows that up to 1 million species risk extinction because of humans and that countries continue to use up nature much faster than it can be replenished.

Its a disaster at least on a par with climate change , with dire implications for human life as we know it.

Animal populations have decreased by an average of 60% in the last four decades; 4 in 10 mammal species have declined significantly since 1900. Insects are dying off en masse. Native trees and grasses are being taken over by foreign invasives. Coral reefs are bleaching.

Scientists have called the degradation of Earths biodiversity in the modern era biological annihilation and the sixth extinction and we caused it. Agriculture, commercial fishing, urbanization, man-made climate change, habitat destruction, pollution: We are the architects of unprecedented massacre.

So what is biodiversity and why should you care?