Extinction threat to over 500 species

MORE THAN 500 land-based species are on the brink of extinction in the next two decades as a result of human activities, scientists have warned.

Researchers believe the rate of decline of the species to be much higher than previously thought and could have a devastating impact on the world’s ecosystems.

The new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences comes from scientists at the universities of Stanford and Mexico City who published a report in 2015 declaring the world’s sixth mass extinction was already under way.

Based on their findings, the researchers now believe this mass extinction is currently accelerating and are calling for immediate global conservation actions to prevent a “catastrophic ecosystem collapse”.

Paul Ehrlich, from Stanford University in California and one of the authors on the study, said: “When humanity exterminates populations and species of other creatures, it is sawing off the limb on which it is sitting, destroying working parts of our own lifesupport system.

“The conservation of endangered species should be elevated to a national and global emergency for governments and institutions, equal to climate disruption to which it is linked.”

To better understand the current extinction risk faced by some of the creatures, the team looked at the abundance and distribution of critically endangered

species, using data from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species and from Birdlife International.

They found 515 – 1.7 per cent – out of 29,400 species analysed are on the brink of extinction, with less than 1,000 individuals remaining in each species.

Those facing extinction are located mainly in tropical and subtropical regions, in areas that are heavily affected by human activities, the researchers said.

Analysis suggests more than 237,000 populations of mammal and bird species on the brink have vanished since 1900.