The planet is experiencing a mass extinction event with an estimated 30,000 species being driven to extinction per year. This mass extinction differs from all previous extinction events in being driven by a single species rather than a planetary or galactic process. 

Humans have cause multiple waves of extinctions, first as hunter-gathers targeted animals for food, then as the discovery of agriculture resulted in a population boom and a need to alter the natural landscape to fit our needs, and lastly as we harnessed of fossil fuels and made available enormous quantities of cheap energy. 

The human population will reach 8 billion by 2020 and 9-15 billion by 2050. No population of large vertebrate animals in the history of the planet has grown that rapidly or with such a profoundly negative impact to the rest of the world. 

Source: Human Population Growth and Extinction

Featured Image by Rob Yelland.