The fundamental book on biodiversity has been published by UNEP: Global biodiversity assessment. I have been asked once: tell me one species that became extinct from the mediterranean sea. Not locally extinct, or threatened. Extinct, like the dodo. I could not find one. Maybe there are one or two. I reported already that in my survey on the state of Mediterranean biodiversity no regional focal point could list a single extinct species. Besided the usual local extinction of monk seals. Or threatened species like Pinna nobilis and Posidonia oceanica. The catastrophic biodiversity loss might be a boomerang if we are not able to provide sound data about it. I studied date mussel fisheries along the apulian coast and I can tell you that this activity led to amazing amounts of habitat destruction, it is a catastrophe, but it did not put in danger (that we know) a single species.

So, please, let's not be catastrophic or we will lose credibility. I already said about Cousteau who, thirty years ago, said that the Mediterranean would have become a swamp in 20 years. The result is that now people do not believe in these catastrophic views anymore, and the politicians cannot be convinced as easily as they were before. Does anybody have a case of final extinction from European waters? Do we have a list of extinct species? Let's be serious. But maybe we can provide an estimate of surfaces of community loss. There are no more Posidonia meadows along the Adriatic coast of Italy. This leads to coastal erosion. Do we know if we are losing white coral communities? Or coralligenous formations? This biodiversity loss is the most important thing we have to quantify, in the immediate. I am sure that some species became extinct due to our action, but they were probably declining species that were not even described. There are very few species that we can drive to extinction. The usual whales and dolphins. Try to do it with flies, or with rats....Mnemiopsis was more efficient in causing the decline of fish in the Black sea than we were.

A contribution by:

Ferdinando Boero