I’m always disapointed and or angry when I read about one or other of these now almost daily mega disasters when they report 1, 10, 100 or whatever number of  (human) deaths. They never point out that thousands, tens of thousands or millions of other species have been exterminated in these anthropogenic infernos and floods.

In one of the recent fires in California, I heard a commentator say that the region had been sterilised, meaning everything in the fire zone had been killed. Bugs, mice, butterflies, rabbits, baby birds in nests, lizards, insects,you name it, they were incinerated in their millions perhaps billions.
The situation is always much worse than we know or are being told.
In pictures: The animals caught in California’s wildfires

The official statistics from 2010 are that between 150 and 200 species go extinct every day. Thats 200 important branches of evolution lost forever, daily. Since 2010 that rate of extinction will have accelerated like the climate crisis in a non linear fashion.
“According to the UN Environment Programme, the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life. Scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate and, say many biologists, is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago. Around 15% of mammal species and 11% of bird species are classified as threatened with extinction.”
Protect nature for world economic security, warns UN biodiversity chief

Lets start with the North Carolina Floods;
“The North Carolina Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that the historic flooding from Florence has killed about 3.4 million chickens and turkeys and 5,500 hogs.” They even used a slang name for a pig! Disrespect much? “The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) was similarly “heartbroken” over the deaths.”
“HSUS is heartbroken by the reports of the catastrophic numbers of farmed animal deaths resulting from the flooding related to Hurricane Florence,” the organization told EcoWatch via email, adding that the animals “needlessly lost their lives.”

“Having an emergency plan, regardless of the numbers of animals at your home, facility, or farm, is the responsibility of the humane steward caring for their welfare,” HSUS added. “If the sheer number of animals makes evacuation extremely difficult or impossible, then a hard look needs to be taken at the number of animals being cared for and the opportunity for them to be considered in an emergency plan. The cost of not doing so, as we can see here, has a devastating impact on the community, the environment and the animals, and are further examples of why we need to reduce the reliance on these massive factory farms.”
3.4 Million Chicken, 5500 Hogs Killed in Flornce’s Flooding

These millions of animals rate a mention only because they exist on a corporations balance sheet somewhere. Around them, untold numbers of wild animals and shamefully abandoned ‘pets’ have succumed to our crack like addiction to carbon.

“New jaw-dropping peer-reviewed science paper: farmed poultry makes up 70% of all birds on Earth, with just 30% being wild. Even worse: 60% of all mammals are livestock, like cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals. Humans have decimated life everywhere on Earth, including remote regions like the poles and deep oceans.”

“One poll after the devastating 2006 storm found that 44 percent of people who chose not to evacuate did so because they didn’t want to leave their pets behind. But still, plenty of animals were abandoned – more than 100,000, according to the Louisiana SPCA. As many as 70,000 died throughout the Gulf Coast. On Tuesday, the ASPCA issued a plea to pet owners, asking them to evacuate their animals, too, and gave them instructions for doing so.”

“We can’t stress enough how important it is to incorporate pets into evacuation plans to keep families together and pets safe,” Dick Green, head of the ASPCA’s disaster response unit, said in the statement.”
Imagine if or more correctly when refugees escaping the unfolding chaos abandon 100,000 ‘family members’. What the hell is a domestic pet if it’s not a family member? It’s just another form of prisoner, the first to be sacrificed when the shit hits the fan.

“Meteorologists marveled at the “gut-wrenching” rate of spread Thursday’s fires exhibited. At one point, the Camp Fire was consuming 80 football fields worth of land per minute, fueled by winds of up to 50 mph. That fire grew more than 20-fold in about six hours just before it overtook the town of Paradise, home to about 27,000 people. By nightfall, the fire had expanded in size to 70,000 acres, and was just 5 percent contained. A reporter’s video caught a fire tornado on camera, an exclamation mark on a truly hellish scene:” Quote from Robin Westenra’s blog post; Views from Armageddon
How on earth could terresterial vertebrates escape from that?

California Wildfires Updates: 42 Deadin Camp Fire, Toll expected to rise

I have previously covered “The Annihilation of Nature” on this blog when I interviewed Professor Paul Ehrlich on Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM

Professor Guy McPherson and I will continue to chronicle the unraveling of the biosphere as long as Industrial Civilisation holds together on our radio show Nature Bats Last on the Progressive Radio Network. 
Good luck everyone, we’re all going to need it, soon the living will envy the dead.

About Kevin Hester

I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.