Tuesday, May 30, 2023

3544. Almost Half the World Species Will Be Gone: Study Shows

By BelfastLive, May 28, 2023

Emerald glass frog (Espadarana prosoblepon), Ecuador, Photo:

 

In the most comprehensive research of its kind to date, the team looked at the population density changes of 71,114 species across the globe. And they found the impact of human industrialization on these 5,969 mammals, 11,162 birds, 10,150 reptiles, 7,316 amphibians, 24,356 fish, and 12,161 insects is significantly more alarming than previously thought.

Birds are faring worst followed by mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish and insects - although there are more unknowns in the latter three categories.

Catherine Finn, PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast and leading author on the research, said: “Almost half of animals on Earth for which assessments are available are currently declining.

“To make matters worse, many of the animal species that are thought to be non-threatened from extinction, are in fact progressively declining.”

Worldwide erosion of biodiversity is one of the most critical challenges facing humanity in the coming decades. It threatens the very ecosystems life depends on as well as food production, the spread of diseases and global economic stability.

According to this traditional method, 28% of life on Earth is threatened with extinction.

The academics behind this groundbreaking research adopted a new approach using a global-scale analysis of a different measure of extinction risk called “population trends” to see whether the population sizes of species are declining, remain stable or are getting better over time.

Using this approach, they found the magnitude of the extinction crisis is considerably more severe than shown by the traditional measure based on threat categories, with an alarming 48% of species declining towards extinction and only 3% showing signals of recovery.




Decreasing vs unknown
Decreasing vs unknown