The previous sections have provided a detailed account of the situation for vertebrate species and subspecies throughout the various continents and oceans of the world. It is a grim chronicle of animal exterminations and an almost unbelievable misuse of living natural resources – in the past due to ignorance, in modern times due to the deliberate desire for short-term profit – and without any sense of responsibility to our fellow human beings or regard for future generations. The gruesome picture, expressed in naked figures of extinct and threatened vertebrates during the last 500 years, appears in the table below.