The media doesn't seem to know how to tackle the mass extinction issue. It's simply too damning and too big. They rarely bring themselves to communicate the reality of it through statistics like "up to 200 species per day" or "50% of all species by the end of the century," which are scientifically accurate.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/...
"Measuring the rate at which new species evolve is difficult, but there's no question that the current extinction rates are faster than that; I think it's inevitable," said Stuart.
The IUCN created shock waves with its major assessment of the world's biodiversity in 2004, which calculated that the rate of extinction had reached 100-1,000 times that suggested by the fossil records before humans.
No formal calculations have been published since, but conservationists agree the rate of loss has increased since then, and Stuart said it was possible that the dramatic predictions of experts like the renowned Harvard biologist E O Wilson, that the rate of loss could reach 10,000 times the background rate in two decades, could be correct.