MAUL OF THE WILD: One in four mammals globally, from elephants to tree shrews, are threatened with extinction.
Image: ©Alicia Wirz
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The baiji dolphin is functionally extinct, orangutans are disappearing and even some species of bats—the most numerous of mammals—are dying out. A new survey of the world's 5,487 mammal species—from rodents to humans—reveals that one in four are facing imminent extinction.
"Mammal species that are just declining, not necessarily near extinction, that's 50 percent," says conservation biologist Jan Schipper of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which keeps the Red List of Threatened Species. "And 836 species—especially rodents and bats—we determined they are threatened but we don't know how threatened, because we don't know enough about them."
Schipper and more than 1,700 scientific colleagues spent the past five years surveying the state of the world's mammals. The results, published in Science to coincide with IUCN's conference on biodiversity this week, reveal that 1,139 mammals around the globe are threatened with extinction and the populations of 52 percent of all mammal species are declining.
South and Southeast Asia are home to the most threatened mammals, from monkeys to rare rats. And many mammals in the species-rich tropical Andes Mountains of South America, Africa's Cameroonian highlands and Albertine Rift as well as the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are also in trouble. Deforestation, along with hunting or gathering food are the prime causes of the rapid declines in land mammals, such as elephants in Asia; most endangered marine mammals, like the vaquita in Mexico's Gulf of California, are killed by fishing nets, ship strikes or pollution.
"Overall conservation status of mammals will likely deteriorate further unless appropriate conservation actions are put in place," the researchers warn in the report.
But the news isn't all grim: Some mammals, such as the black-footed ferret of western North America and the Hainan black-crested gibbon (found only on China's Hainan Island), have been able to rebound as the result of conservation efforts. "These are the kinds of success stories that we need to clasp onto and find out what worked," Schipper says. "Usually, it takes a lot of money."
But he cautions that any conservation success is likely temporary unless the root problems of, for example, deforestation are addressed. In the case of the Hainan gibbon, for instance, "there's not enough room for that species to go back to having a thousand individuals unless we stop deforestation and hunting," Schipper says.
There's also the clash between saving animals and curing other environmental ills such as global warming. Vast tracts of tropical rainforest have been replaced by palm oil plantations for food and biofuels, satellite imagery reveals.
But addressing climate change could also help lessen this extinction crisis as well; the loss of sea ice as a result of a warming world threatens to make life impossible for those mammals such as the polar bear and harp seal that rely on it to survive.
The "general trend is that many more mammal species are rapidly declining than we had suspected," Schipper says. "Fifty percent of species are declining and 5 percent of species are in an upward recovery—that's just not enough."
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16 Comments
Add Comment(It's the demographics, stupid!)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCO2-emissions and such are not the problem, contrary to what the cynical advertising world and politicians would like you to think. The biggest taboo in every respect is the unchecked, unlimited human population expansion, that threatens all life on this planet, plants, animals and ourselves. Clean technologies are not going to solve this; it is high time man got the courage to discuss the ultimate taboo: limiting human population growth.
Okay, so how about some perspective. What percentage of the world's mammal species are USUALLY under threat of extinction, by the same criteria articulated here?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisal--We do, buddy. It's called war. I have a funny feeling we're in for a lot of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisal--We do, buddy. It's called war. I have a funny feeling we're in for a lot of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLead the way Al...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFunny how the only real solution to all this (self control) is always the great unspeakable unthinkable. Heaven forbid we stop making more people, anything but that. Don't care if it wipes out all life on earth, we will not stop breeding uncontrollably under any circumstance. People are such simple animals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOut-of-control populations suffer proportionately. It's the way of nature. The higher they rise, the harder they fall. With each advance in medicine, each virus we circumvent, we buy a little time, and we raise the stakes. We have risen to a towering height at the expense of everything around us. How poetic, when this house of cards comes smashing down in the end. Such potential, such a waste.
humans seem to be poor custodians of the world
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHear, hear, hotblack!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo sad but true......My biggest contribution to this problem is choosing to not reproduce.
And no human government will ever be able to solve this problem because there is too much greed and concern over our standard of living. No one on "Wall Street or Main Street" in every country in this world cares about animals dying and the environment being destroyed, for different reasons, mind you. Wall Street and the Rich want to exploit, drill, and ensure their luxurious lifestyle will stand while the Poor on "Main Street " need to survive to the point that in some places like Kenya, they poison wildlife to plant crops or graze cattle in the dead wildlife habitats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe irony of not choosing to reproduce is that those intelligent enough to realize that the rising human population is the cause of the majority of this world's problems don't go on to create similarly intelligent offspring. This leaves the world with a disproportionately increasing population of people who don't care or are to stupid to realize what's really going on. Recent research has even shown that when comparing intelligence to reproductive rates, that there is a bell curve. The peak of reproduction occurs in slightly below average IQ ranges and reproduction decreases as IQ increases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, unless something happens to favor the intelligent as far as reproduction goes... we're all set to perpetuate more stupid and environmentally ignorant people. I would imagine that a world-wide catastrophe and drastic destabilization of our current governmental infrastructure would be enough to make this happen. Too bad that by then we'll have more pressing concerns than our carbon footprints.
As has been said before, two things need to happen in all world governments in order to stave off this crisis:
1. A very strict and progressive push towards environmentally friendly no-carbon energy sources.
2. Tax incentives tor having 2 or less children.
You simply cannot enforce a restriction on people's reproductive rights. The alternative is rewarding people for doing what you want... not reproducing too much.
Pray with brothers and sisters that crickets will be the next to go. I can't stand those noisy cockroach wannabees.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe problems are corrupt world leadership and poor education.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe comment by biologist Jan Schipper in the above article ..."And 836 species - especially rodents and bats - we determined they are threatened, but we don't know how threatened, because we don't know enough about them" is total nonsense; and shows you the "unscientific" basis for this study. If you don't know enough about them (as admitted by Schipper), how can you determine they are threatened.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, the casual utilization of words, e.g., "functionally extinct" , "imminent extinction", "dying out", etc. without definition appears to be more fearmongering than a scientific appraisal of the facts.
I agree with David. There really is no problem. I just went to the zoo and there was an elephant there, so obviously this is all fearmongering by a bunch of tree-hugging libtards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the struggle for survival, one solution is less competition for food supply. Conserving other species is extremely important for the sustainability of our earth but at the same time our values may be strangely warped if we would rather see our own species suffer and die to protect an animal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the struggle for survival, one solution is less competition for food supply. Conserving other species is extremely important for the sustainability of our earth but at the same time our values may be strangely warped if we would rather see our own species suffer and die to protect an animal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this