‘We must act now’ to save 500 species from extinction
MORE than 500 animal species could be wiped out in the next two decades, creating a “catastrophic ecosystem collapse”.
Scientists have warned that the rate of decline, in species such as the Sumatran rhino, is accelerating much faster than previously thought and could have a devastating impact on the planet.
The study comes from researchers who published a report in 2015 declaring the world’s sixth mass extinction was already under way.
Ecologist Gerardo Ceballos, from the University of Mexico, said: “We are facing our final opportunity to ensure that the many services nature provides us do not get irretrievably sabotaged.”
Paul Ehrlich, from Stanford University in California, explained: “When humanity exterminates populations and species of other creatures, it is sawing off the limb on which it sits, destroying working parts of its own life-support system.
“The conservation of endangered species should be elevated to a national and global emergency for governments and institutions, equal to climate disruption.”
Destruction
More than 400 vertebrate species have died out in the last 100 years – extinctions that would have taken up to 10,000 years in the normal course of evolution.
Examples include the ivory-billed woodpecker, the Round Island burrowing boa and, more recently, the golden toad.
Researchers found 515 out of 29,400 species analysed were on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 1,000 individuals remaining in each species.
Those on the brink of extinction, which include the Clarion Island wren, the Espanola giant tortoise and the harlequin poison frog, are located mainly in tropical and subtropical regions.
These declines are being driven by the wildlife trade, population growth, habitat destruction, pollution and climate change, according to the study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.