How does one react to the fact that, according to the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, 25% of mammals on this planet are at risk of extinction?

That’s one quarter of all mammals on earth.

How in the hell did we allow it to come to this? That there would be a time in our history in which a quarter of all mammals on this planet would be facing the possibility of extinction. I realize that I’m repeating myself, but I am simply stunned.

And the foremost cause? Loss of habitat primarily due to deforestation.

As the population of the planet increases, and room and resources are required to facilitate such growth, animals are paying the price for it. In fact, according to the authors of the report, 25% could be an underestimate.

It is a good thing that animals do not possess the ability to take up arms and coordinate some sort of counter offensive, because put into human terms they would be fighting for their very survival, something that, given our own rationales throughout history, we would be unable to condemn them for.

And rightly so.

As time passes, and we continue to grow and develop as a species, despite our many achievements, be they in the arts or architecture or flight, one accomplishment will remain the most important in human history no matter what occurs in the years ahead. We may, in the future, cure Cancer and AIDS, put a person on Mars, or even find a way to curb the planet’s food crises. But despite all of these things, mankind’s greatest achievement is, and will always be, the photograph.

A single image, captured in time, for all time.

Why, you ask, do I believe the photograph to be of such importance? Because, in the century ahead, photographs, along with film, will be all that will remain of many of this world’s inhabitants. Fifty years from now school children may very well only know what a Polar Bear looks like because of photographs. The same can be said of numerous other species that are widely known. Of course, species are rendered extinct on a weekly basis as it is, but most of them aren’t all that familiar to us – certainly not familiar enough to be glorified in the pages of future textbooks.

One wonders what questions the children of the future will ask as to why the Polar Bear did not survive? One wonders what responses will be provided by those children’s teachers?

There, frozen in time, the image of that majestic Arctic bear will remain for generations to gaze upon, as if a thing of legend, almost other-worldly, the inhabitant of a time long since past. And as time passes, so too will the reason for its destruction be forgotten.

Here we find ourselves, on the verge of a photograph, looking to those in positions of responsibility to make the right choices. And with such a profound issue presented them, you need not guess at how they intend to respond…

“The state Legislature is looking to hire a few good polar bear scientists. The conclusions have already been agreed upon — researchers just have to fill in the science part.

A $2 million program funded with little debate by the Legislature last month calls for using state money to fund an “academic based” conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears’ survival.

Republican legislative leaders say a federal decision to declare the polar bears “threatened” by climate change would have troubling effects on Arctic oil development and the state’s economic future.

Last week a federal judge ordered the Bush administration to release its already-tardy decision under the Endangered Species Act by May 15. By law, such a decision must be based strictly on science, not on possible economic consequences.

Legislative leaders said they are frustrated that researchers skeptical of the doomsday scenario get marginalized as crackpots or industry shills by the media and scientific agencies.

“We want to have the money to hire scientists to answer the Interior (Department) scientists,” House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, said last week.

The $2 million is also to be used for a national public relations campaign to promote the findings of the conference.

Critics say it’s a waste of state money because all the hard scientific research points in the other direction.

“This truly is the conference to nowhere,” said University of Alaska researcher Rick Steiner, who has pressed the Palin administration unsuccessfully for five months to release any scientific backup for its position opposing the federal polar bear listing.

The time for debate is over, especially when the opposition is using “junk science,” said Melanie Duchin with Greenpeace in Alaska. “This is clearly the same sort of ‘question, deny and delay’ tactic used by Exxon Mobil and the Bush administration to confuse the public over the severity of global warming and stall any meaningful action to deal with the problem.”