In a reading from his new book, The Diversity of Life, Baird Professor of Science Edward O. Wilson warned last night that biological diversity in the environment must be preserved at all costs.

Addressing a crowd of 120 at The Inn at Harvard, Wilson advocated planning and long-term management strategies as a way of bypassing the political logjams that have hampered environmental protection.

"Ninety-nine percent of all the species that ever lived are now extinct," Wilson read. "The modern fauna and flora are composed of survivors that somehow managed to dodge and weave through all the radiations and extinctions of geological history."

Wilson, who is curator in entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, has won Pulitzer Prizes for two previous books.

Mass Extinctions

He said that in the course of evolution there have been five occurrences of mass extinction.

Full recovery from these natural disasters, such as a meteorite hitting the Earth or a rapid climate change, takes tens of thousands of years, Wilson said.

Wilson contends in The Diversity of Life that homo sapiens have initiated a sixth mass extinction as a result of environmentally irresponsible development.

He said the narrative form of his book appeals to readers at an intellectual as well as an emotional level.

"A scientist is a storyteller in a different dimension," Wilson said.