Agence France-Presse: ANIMAL and plant species are vanishing at unprecedented rates, evidence that the Earth is facing a tsunami of mass extinction, warn experts gathering for a global conservation conference starting tomorrow. Whether through habitat loss, pollution, hunting or indirectly by global warming, humans are to blame for what may be the first major die-off in 65 million years, they say. More than 8000 ministers, UN officials, NGOs, scientists and business chiefs will be in Barcelona, …