Download the video here! This video took five days to research, think, record, and edit. This was a complex project that probably used every feature in iMovie 2009. Tell me what you think by sending me an email at mac.thecast@gmail.com.

Notes

I held continental species (species not living on islands) in special accord during research and in the video. But why? 95% of all recorded bird and mammal extinctions are island (or Australian) species! This is because island species were extremely vulnerable to pressure from imported humans, mammals, birds, plants, and new diseases. While "invasive species" will always be a problem for island ecosystems, that first onslaught of extinctions will not happen again because there are no longer any ecosystems with 40 million years of isolation.

There are a few continental species that according to my research, may have gone extinct due to deforestation. For example, Juscelinomys candango is described by the Red List as being disturbed by urban sprawl. Its natural environment may have been the Brazilian rainforest, but this is not noted, and deforestation is not listed as a threat. Conuropsis carolinensis, the Carolina Parakeet, died out in 1904. The Red List says it was hunted, killed as a pest, struggled through competition with bees, and Willis quotes the Red List as saying, "also said to be affected by deforestation." I quote it as saying, "The main causes of the species's extinction were persecution... and deforestation..." The Wikipedia article for the Carolina Parakeet does not mention deforestation at all, and describes poultry disease as the most likely destroyer of North America's only bird species.

In data collection, dates were approximate, and a few achieved with extra research. For example, one Red List entry stated that a species went extinct shortly after explorers arrived in Cuba. An approximate date was added after research in this instance. Oral history and unconfirmed sightings were not trusted, and species from the Red List were still added even if the only evidence for them had been a subfossil (partially fossilized bone), or in the case of some gazelle species, pelts. In Red List data collection, species listed as Extinct in the Wild were incorporated. For CREO data, species only Extinct in the Wild (EW) were not incorporated, only making a small difference. I believe Willis Echenbach, who initially spurred my interest in independently verifying his findings (see Sources and Downloads section) did not incorporate any EW Species.

An article from the University of Wisconsin-Madison highlights local interest in Aspen Growth acceleration [Remote]. The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center blog writes about a study done by them published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) on climate-driven forest growth acceleration [Remote]. I reference in the video twice a paper by Nemani et al. which analyzes NASA SeaWiFS satellite data and finds a 6.2% increase in terrestrial vegetation as measured by grams of Carbon per square meter, and finds that 42% of global increase in vegetation was in the Amazon rain forest, making it the fastest growing area on Earth. That paper is found here [Remote] and is hosted locally in PDF form here [Local].

Sources and Downloads

The opening sequence [Local] is an oration by Brian Swimme, a "mathematical cosmologist" and spiritualist that is director at the Center for the Story of the Universe at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The original source of the video is the documentary Planet Earth.

"Where Are The Corpses?", by Willis Echenbach, posted at Anthony Watt's Watts Up With That? blog.

When ominous quotes are displayed, a bell sounds with a background of static noise. This is pulled from the introduction of "The Glass Prison", by Dream Theater [Local], from their album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. This is a very heavy song that clocks in at just under fourteen minutes.

The Diversity of Life, by E.O. Wilson

http://raysweb.net/specialplaces/pages/wilson.html

The chalkboard illustration was created in PocketMac Tabula Rasa [Local]

The Conservation Biology source can be found here [Princeton] [Local]

The video behind the Conservation Biology quote and the video that states deforestation causes tree species extinctions is found here [YouTube] [Local].

The video of the man standing in front of a green screen talking about the rainforest is found on youtube here: [YouTube] [Local].

The NASA video [Remote] [Local] came from NASA's SVS animation site. The satellite was called the Seastar and collected data using the SeaWiFS instrument. The NASA page describes it as collecting ocean data, but it also collects data over land. Later on the page, it is described as showing land "Normalized Difference Vegetation Index", a way of measuring vegetation from space.

I heard about the Audobon Society 2009 report [Audobon Society] [Local] from a February 2009 Master Resource blog entry [Remote].

The example of emotional appeal used by save-the-rainforest activists came from the YouTube video, "The Amazon Rainforest - The Evils of Deforestation" [Local].

The HD video of the match is available here [Local]. The video and music for the end came from this video [Local] combined with this video [Local] created in Apple Motion 3.0. This is a video of static [Local].

Download spreadsheets used in the making of this video:

[CREO Mammals (Numbers) (Excel)]

[Red List Mammals (Numbers) (Excel)]

[CREO Fish (Numbers) (Excel)]

[Workbook1.xlsb - A Workbook I did some calculations and graphing in. (Excel for Mac 2008)]

Download all images used in the making of this video: eraimages.zip