Extinction Around the Globe

The loss of furry mammals captures the public eye. The extinction of another few dozen beetle species—quite possibly not yet even known or cataloged—may not. Yet such losses may be equally troubling from an ecological perspective—and from a Christian perspective too, if we consider the diversity of creation as having value before the God who cares for every lily of the field, every sparrow that falls. Human-caused extinctions are nothing new, of course: whenever humans have colonized new areas, we have inevitably had dramatic effects on natural ecosystems.

In North America early…