There are over 8,700.000 species of life on this earth, and I am sure, before man began his destruction of the earth, there could have been many more. According to Evolutionary Biologist, 99.9% of earlier species are extinct. If we now have fewer species is hard to say, but man has decimated buffalo hercs, destroyed rain forests, and dried up rivers and lakes, Nature sometimes burns forests with lightning, but probably the biggest culprit is man, the camper. There have been cases documented where evil-minded people have started fires for their own benefit, such as creating jobs as smoke jumpers and forest fire fighters
Man has ruined much of the environment and is hell-bent or ruining the atmosphere with its heavy carbon footprint. There is much denial of this because of political reasons, but an unbiased person who is willing to objectively monitor the climates today knows we are heading downhill with global warming.
Soon Polar bears, walruses and other arctic animals will be extinct, if we let this destruction.continue. We know there have been natural climate changes for millions of years, but this is different. This still may be controllable. Most of The politicians, at least in the United States, get elected with big money from manufacturers etc. and they could care less about the future. Maybe someday we will get national leaders in the world who really care about the declining species and the diminishing returns happening now.