Endangered species may become extinct 100 times faster than previously thought, scientists warned today, in a bleak re-assessment of the threat to global biodiversity. Writing in the journal Nature, leading ecologists claim that methods used to predict when species will die out are seriously flawed, and dramatically underestimate the speed at which some plants and animals will be wiped out.
The findings suggest that animals such as the western gorilla, the Sumatran tiger and the Malayan sun bear, the smallest of the bear family, may become extinct much sooner than conservationists feared. Ecologists Brett Melbourne at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Alan Hastings at the University of California, Davis, said conservation organisations should use updated extinction models to urgently re-evaluate the risks to wildlife.
“Some species could have months instead of years left, while other species that haven’t even been identified as under threat yet should be listed as endangered,” said Melbourne. The warning has particular implications for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which compiles an annual “red list” of endangered species. Last year, the list upgraded western gorillas to critically endangered, after populations of a subspecies were found to be decimated by Ebola virus and commercial trade in bush meat. The Yangtze river dolphin was listed as critically endangered, but is possibly already extinct.
Craig Hilton-Taylor, who manages the IUCN red list in Cambridge, said extinction estimates are often inadequate. “We are certainly underestimating the number of species that are in danger of becoming extinct, because there are around 1.8 million described species and we’ve only been able to assess 41,000 of those,” he said. More than 16,000 species worldwide are currently threatened with extinction, according to a 2007 report from the IUCN. One in four mammal species, one in eight bird species and one in three amphibian species are on the organisation’s red list. An updated list is due to be published in October.
– from www.guardian.co.uk
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