It then was brought to an international public and onto the U. S. policy agenda by the 1980 Global 2000 Report to the President. These still are the canonical texts. Global 2000 forecast ex- traordinary losses of species between 1980 and 2000. The actual data on the observed rates of species extinction are wildly at variance with Myers's and following statements, and do not provide support for the various policies suggested to deal with the purported dangers. But the bandwagon of the species extinction issue continues to roll with ever-increasing speed.
Society properly is concerned about possible dangers to species.
Individual species, and perhaps all species taken together, constitute a valuable endowment, and we should guard their survival just as we guard our other physical and esthetic assets. But we should strive for as clear and unbiased an under- standing as possible in order to make the best possible judgments about how much time and money to spend in guarding them, in a world in which this valuable activity must compete with guarding and supporting other valuable aspects of civilization. In the low deforestation case, approximately l5 percent of the planet's species can be expected to be lost. In the high deforestation case, perhaps as much as 20 percent will be lost. The basis of any useful projection must be some body of experience collected under some range of conditions that encompass the expected conditions, or that can reasonably be extrapolated to the expected conditions.