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I agree with Johnny on this one and partly with you.
To explain - I view the issue from a similar perspective like you, I like animals and don't mind them around me - apart from those that are an immediate threat to me. But as Johnny mentioned others are not necessarily like that, some people like to torture animals, others don't like animals while some people just don't care. So, yeah while it is nice to see that you don't mind animals, I agree with Johnny that the human race is in part responsible for intensifying the crisis for wildlife - besides all the garbage and contamination we bring along, even if not on purpose(oil spills etc.).
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Yep , plenty of objections . We are consuming resources at lightning speeds with most hydrocarbons due to be exhausted in a few hundred years .We are sucking up krill to turn into fertiliser to make grain to feed cows so that we can have beef . The population is due to increase by another 50% this century . We have an economic model that is based on consuming ever more , we treat it as terrible when we produce and consume less than last year. Basically we can only sustain this for so long . Because the timescales are measured in tens of years most politicians cant afford to think in these terms .
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This is al well and good, but the impact of this when it fails is on the human race, not on nature though. (With the exception of things like overfishing).
But in Europe for example populations are falling, isn't it therefore a god solution to get the third world up to first world as son as possible so their populations stabilise and perhaps fall back to a level that is sustainable?
I see development as good in this respect.
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Thats what the population bods are pinning their hopes on . The rest of the world will expand to raise the population by 3 billion this century and then when they are all educated and have lots of 'things' they will stop breeding like rabbits . Its a bit of a long shot , and at best we end up with 50% more people . That includes 50% more Justin Beibers .
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Quote: That includes 50% more Justin Beibers
Only if we allow the current one to survive and procreate. 
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With technology, and of course extra CO2, we should be able to feed them all. We might of course be easting manufactured meat protein, but I don't have a problem with that necessarily, because sustainability of things like fish and meat is in question, and of moral doubt too.
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Now half a Justin Bieber - that I can live with, but please not another whole one (we'd gladly export the one we have!)
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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Tbf, the developing world may have expanding populations but they don't have expanding waistlines. Developed countries have an ever increasing appetite to consume resources (and also the means to do it).
Long haul flights, Fuel-guzzling 4x4s, Electronic devices and vast quantities of food are (mostly) the preserve of the developed world.
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That is true, every loss of person in the population of Europe could pay for 4 in india.
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It is falling on nature though , you cant generally speaking have a tiger living wild around people . One or the other tends to bleed a lot . So more people = less habitat , less habitat= less non human creatures .
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Of course those increasing populations are in cities these days, so we might well see something like California, a handful of big cities with almost wilderness inbetween.
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Munchies_Matt wrote: isn't it therefore a god solution to get the third world up to first world as son as possible so their populations stabilise and perhaps fall back to a level that is sustainable?
They don't have to be rich to stop f***ing like rabbits.
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But as women become educated and have careers the child birth rate drops.
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Oh it works, no doubt about it, but it's not required.
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Well actually they sort of do. Being that poor means that infant mortality is very high, so lots of children don't survive. Further to that, they don't exactly have sweet pension schemes - they need the kids to work the land for them.
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Not that many. 2 - 4 surviving children would do it. Any more and you're deliberately creating a lack of resources for your own short-term benefit.
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Yes, but to get 2-4 SURVIVING children you have to have silly numbers of children.
Mali has a 10% infant mortality rate (compared to 0.5% in the UK).
If 10% are dying before their first birthday then the attrition over the first 18 years in gonna be huge.
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Right, so you make a few more, that's not the problem.
But they're evidently making too many.
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Quite possibly, but you never know exactly how many you need. Some people may be lucky and others won't be. So they just err on the side of caution and keep going.
Education and availability of protection may help too.
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Even if population freezes, there are areas humans are outconsuming its resources.
As towns expand, they are surprised when foxes, bears, etc appear in "their" yards, soon dead.
Rivers are being bled dry all along their paths by growing cities and towns.
Farms are being overused to feed us, without the fallow season.
China is buying up land in other countries to farm. People are going hungry there while food is shipped back to China.
Toxic landfills are appearing in countries (electronics, etc). Coincidentally, illnesses are appearing in those same areas, from runoff and unsafe recycling methods.
Untreated sewage is still being dumped into rivers and oceans in this age.
Greedy corporations insist on wasting drinking water to frack gas out of the ground.
No, I don't think we fit into nature very well. 
I need an app that will automatically deliver a new BBBBBBBBaBB (beautiful blonde bimbo brandishing bountiful bobbing bare breasts and bodacious butt) every day.
John Simmons / outlaw programmer
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I agree with all that you say, but think of it from the point of Europe only. In developed countries, don't we fit into nature quite well?
(Admittedly we send a lot of stuff abroad for recycling which we shouldn't.)
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I'm sure that your postulation is made in good faith, but it really misses the point. Sure, some wildlife thrives because of man's presence. In North America we have reccoons and skunks that love our garbage. We have invasives like European Starlings and Eurasian Sparrows that are not intimidated by man's presence and love our bird feeders. In the UK there are foxes. But, for all the species that tolerate/get along with us, there are tens, hundreds, thousands that we are driving to extinction. We have badgers (different species in N.Am and Europe, but all in trouble), wolverines, Polar Bears (will almost certainly be extirpated from the wild within 100 years), in Britain, the humble, loveable and pest-devouring hedgehog ....
Some species need more space than we give them (e.g., the Lynx), some are out-competed by invasives or species that thrive from our presence (The Eastern Bluebird was almost wiped out, the Red Squirrel in Britain) ....
Ecology is a vast web of interdependence. Species have gone extinct in the past with and without man's help. New species come along. This is evolution, BUT, the rate at which it is happening is unprecedented in known history. We are having as big an affect on the world's wildlife now as ice ages have in the past (and whatever whacked the dinosaurs!). Look at the Passenger Pigeon in North America. Its extinction has let ticks run wild with the ever increasing affect of Lyme Disease.
We are messing up our home like a frat kid after a bender. David Attenborough was merely stating a fact. It has happened, it is happening and it will happen. I'd like to see us mitigate more, plan and execute more wildlife sustainability and stop burying our heads in the sand.
Most of all, as a keen environmentalist and nature lover, I'm sad!
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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I don't think there are thousands of species at risk though, I have certainly seen no evidence. Polar bears are doing perfectly OK all in all, Badgers are so numerous in the UK they are causing TB again, Hedgehogs are in decline, but this actually highlights what I am getting at, we actually care and do something about it in developed countries. http://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/leaflets/sobh.pdf[^]
I cant comment for the US though but clearly people like you do care, as do almost al people who aren't sociopaths. So we do care for nature actively and I believe that mans actions necessarily impact it negatively.
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Hey Matt, be careful about bandying "the US" about, I'm an ex-Brit in Canada mate! 
Sorry, but thousands is an understatement. CITES lists 5,600 animals and 30,000 plants: http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/species.php[^]. These are only the one that they are attempting to protect. There are many more that have not even been identified that are threatened.
Polar bears: Weights have been falling as have birth rates. The population is currently reasonably stable, but it is more fragile than ever. There have been reports of them switching to other foods (with the declne in seal availability) but the consensus in the scientific community is due to the combination of the dissappearing ice cap and ranging more widely for alternate food sources bringing them into more conflict with man, Polar Bears are in trouble.
I'm glad to hear that Brock is on the rebound, clearly I'm out-of-date (I've been here for almost 20 years!) Agreed that the cute and cuddly do get special attention, , but the not so cute are ignored . Every species that is prematurely lost is a shame and each species typically has multiple dependent species.
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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You are completely leaving out the impact of farming, and all the large animals in Europe have been wiped out already, so your baseline is already way off. If you are willing to completely change the way we live, grow food and protect the environment, then perhaps we could make a change.
In the US, we've killed off all the natural predators for deer, so we have to keep them in check through hunting. Bringing the system back in balance would mean reintroducing wolves throughout much of the country.
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