The conservationists' string of laments is a familiar one by now. Even a child can name the elements: worldwide degradation of land, loss of habitats (especially in the rapidly shrinking tropical rainforests) and the accelerating extinction of species. In fact, the plaint has become so familiar that we have almost stopped hearing it. It's too abstract, too general, to absorb. Unless it is couched in terms of a threat to a particularly striking or lovable species -- the red-crowned crane in Japan, the Spix's macaw in Brazil, China's pandas -- we tend to ignore the glum greenies or dismiss them as alarmists.

As for less attention-getting forms of life, well, a species of butterfly or fish or tree might die out, and we not only wouldn't care, we wouldn't even know. Sometimes, though, one of those warning voices manages to get our attention sufficiently to alert us to the bigger picture of destruction and loss, not just the colorful individual example.

Such was the case with a study of extinction rates published last month in the international science journal Nature. It zeroed in on Singapore as a worst-case microcosm of a process scientists say is unfolding throughout Southeast Asia. (Singapore was chosen both because it is an advanced model of urban development in the region and because, thanks to the meticulous British, who commandeered the island in 1819, it has records of identified species dating back almost two centuries. Most tropical regions' records are much more recent.) The study's findings were sobering indeed.