Extinction Risk

Trophy hunting of Aders’ duiker (Cephalophus adersi) has begun in Zanzibar despite its listing as a critically endangered species and the documented decline of populations on Unguja (Zanzibar) island. This was revealed in an article in the March 2014 issue of The Hunting Report which describes Aders’ as a “rare duiker species of interest to collectors”. Hunting in three community forests in the south of Unguja is being operated by Zanzibar Wildlife Safaris, a company formed for this purpose by a Tanzanian hunting outfitter and his South African-based partner, an expert bow hunter. The Zanzibar government has evidently sanctioned this development, despite receiving funds from elsewhere for the conservation of Aders’ duiker and other species that are now being targeted by the hunters.

There is no evidence to suggest that it has undertaken the thorough investigation of the feasibility of offtake that was recommended when trophy hunting was first mooted more than a decade ago. While the popularity of the package offered by Zanzibar Wildlife Safaris is not yet clear, one well-known Canadian hunter and broadcaster has posted photos of his Aders’ duiker and other Zanzibar trophies online.

Recent extinction rates are 100 to 1000 times their pre-human levels in well-known, but taxonomically diverse groups from widely different environments. If all species currently deemed "threatened" become extinct in the next century, then future extinction rates will be 10 times recent rates. Some threatened species will survive the century, but many species not now threatened will succumb. Regions rich in species found only within them (endemics) dominate the global patterns of extinction. Although new technology provides details of habitat losses, estimates of future extinctions are hampered by our limited knowledge of which areas are rich in endemics.

It is timely that Green Agenda consider the issue of hope, because the circumstances humanity and the living planet face in 2021 are dire.

At the time of the Glasgow climate summit, the world finds itself facing three types of security crises...

THE EXPLORATION OF TIME TRAVEL TO THE PAST AS A MEANS OF PRESERVING A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF THE HUMAN POPULATION IN THE FACE OF EXTINCTION LEVEL TERRESTRIAL THREATS. Prepared for review for the Lifeboat Foundation, the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Space Nation Asgardia

—It will not be extraterrestrial impacts, disease, or other extrinsic agents that will cause the extinction of Man, but rather the collapse of his artificial economy. We argue that there is no productive category of the economy beyond the Service Sector in which to shift the global work force. As the Agriculture, Manufacturing, and Service Sectors continue to shed workers in a bid to reduce costs, this inevitably feeds Unemployment. A global economic regime in which an ever decreasing pool of workers subsidizes an ever growing army of unemployed is axiomatically unsustainable and conduces to system breakdown. That fateful day, profit-minded agricultural corporations will have no further incentive to produce food or deliver it to the cities.

Preserving global biodiversity depends upon designating many more large terrestrial and marine areas as strictly protected areas. Yet recent calls for addressing biodiversity loss by setting aside more protected areas have been met with hostility from some social scientists and even some conservation biologists. The main objections against the so-called 'nature needs half' movement include the following. First, setting aside protected areas implies that some vulnerable human communities will be displaced to make space for wildlife. Second, separating humans from their environment ignores the fact that humans have always been part of the environments around them, and creates a false dichotomy between nature and culture. Third, conservationists are said to put the blame for biodiversity loss on all humanity, rather than on those who are doing most of the damage. Fourth, many social justice proponents argue that human population growth is not related to biodiversity loss or other sustainability challenges. This article critically addresses these four objections, exposing their robust anthropo-centric bias. Protected area critics reliably demand fairness for human beings at the expense of nonhuman beings, who they treat as morally inconsequential. But justice is not only about just us. Conservation properly understood implies a fair division of Earth's resources between human and nonhuman beings. Justice demands setting aside at least half Earth's lands and seas for nature, free from intensive economic activities.

Here we build on the manifesto 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, issued by the Alliance of World Scientists. As a group of conservation biologists deeply concerned about the decline of insect populations, we here review what we know about the drivers of insect extinctions, their consequences, and how extinctions can negatively impact humanity. We are causing insect extinctions by driving habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation, use of polluting and harmful substances, the spread of invasive species, global climate change, direct overexploitation, and co-extinction of species dependent on other species. With insect extinctions, we lose much more than species. We lose abundance and biomass of insects, diversity across space and time with consequent homogenization, large parts of the tree of life, unique ecological functions and traits, and fundamental parts of extensive networks of biotic interactions. Such losses lead to the decline of key ecosystem services on which humanity depends. From pollination and decomposition, to being resources for new medicines, habitat quality indication and many others, insects provide essential and irreplaceable services. We appeal for urgent action to close key knowledge gaps and curb insect extinctions. An investment in research programs that generate local, regional and global strategies that counter this trend is essential. Solutions are available and implementable, but urgent action is needed now to match our intentions.

OMG - THIS  PROVES THAT THE EXTENT OF OUR COLLECTIVE AND INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESSES EXCEEDS THE CONFINES OF THIS MULTIVERSE

THEY CONFIRM THAT HUMANITY KILLS ITSELF OFF ENTIRELY AND THEN STARTS OVER, THAT CYCLE IS ABOUT TO CHANGE VIA THE COMING EVENT, WHICH WE CAN CAUSE VIA ORGONE BUBBLE TECHNOLOGY.

The contribution of deterministic and stochastic processes to species coexistence is widely debated. With the
introduction of powerful statistical techniques, we can now better characterise different sources of uncertainty
when quantifying niche differentiation. The theoretical literature on the effect of stochasticity on coexistence,
however, is often ignored by field ecologists because of its technical nature and difficulties in its application.
In this review, we examine how different sources of variability in population dynamics contribute to
coexistence. Unfortunately, few general rules emerge among the different models that have been studied to
date. Nonetheless, we believe that a greater understanding is possible, based on the integration of coexistence
and population extinction risk theories. There are two conditions for coexistence in the presence of
environmental and demographic variability: (1) the average per capita growth rates of all coexisting species must
be positive when at low densities, and (2) these growth rates must be strong enough to overcome negative
random events potentially pushing densities to extinction. We propose that critical tests for species coexistence
must account for niche differentiation arising from this variability and should be based explicitly on notions of
stability and ecological drift.

Publisher: Risky Business Project
Authors: Kate Gordon, Matt Lewis, Jamesine Rogers, Dr. Robert Kopp, Dr. Solomon Hsiang
Date: June 2014

https://riskybusiness.org/report/national/

Climate Change and Food Security, Economics of Climate Change, Climate Change Economics, Climate Crisis, Climate Security, Extinction Risk, Extreme weather, Global Warming, Climate Politics, Political Instability and Climate Change, Water-Food-Energy-Climate Change Nexus

Based on radiocarbon and craniofacial morphological evidence, we propose that a population replacement took place in the
southeastern Pampas of Argentina sometime between 6000 and 3500 years BP. The analysis of the available radiocarbon database shows that there is a significant gap between 5960 and 5060 14C years BP. The morphometric analyses of samples of human crania corresponding to the early mid-Holocene (ca. 8000–6000 14C years BP) and to the early late-Holocene (ca. 3500–2000 14C years BP) strongly suggest that they probably belonged to at least two different biological populations. We contend that this population event must be considered the outcome of a local population contraction/extinction process, followed by the later expansion/dispersal of a new population into the area. This is consistent with the expectations of metapopulation ecology and evolutionary geography, which
predict that increasing extinction risks select for higher dispersal rates, since local population contraction or extinction often result in empty or thinly populated patches, whose existence makes dispersal both feasible and profitable. A slightly corrected version of the model advanced by Politis (1984), that establishes a linkage between the climatic induced demographic and range contraction of critical mammalian resources (e.g., guanaco) and those of human populations, is still useful to explain situations such as the alleged mid-Holocene population replacement event.

Based on a field study (2002-2004), developed by a group of experts (COPAN Project), CONABIO concluded the first national evaluation of the status of wild populations of Crocodylus moreletii in Mexico. It gathered information on presence, abundance and habitat from 10 States (63 localities). Forty new localities were recorded, for a total of 105; the species was recorded in 21.9% of historic localities visited. A general index of abundance (total individuals/Km surveyed) gave a figure of 3.16 ind/Km. Based on these data and geographic projections of available habitat an estimation of ca. 15,000 adults in the wild was obtained (nearly 80,000 individuals of all ages). Adding available data from Guatemala and Belize, the estimation reached about 19,000 adults in the whole species' range (or slightly over 100,000 individuals of all ages). Furthermore, a dynamic population simulation using Vortex 9.42, with only about 1/3 of the total estimated population, due to the upper limit of the software (30,000 individuals) showed a very low probability of extinction (0.1380 ± 0.015). These results indicate an effective comeback of a resilient taxon, after nearly critical depletion of natural populations by 1970. On the basis of this, and other evidence, a proposal for removal (or down-listing) the species in the US ESA was submitted by Mexico.

Remote sensing is increasingly used by policy-makers and conservationists to identify conservation priorities and changes in land cover. This is particularly important in the biodiverse tropics, where there are often few field data. Conservation action is often directed towards areas containing globally threatened species, but there have been few attempts to improve assessments of species’ extinction risk through remote sensing. Here, in a novel approach we use deforestation estimates, measured through satellite imagery, to assess the conservation status of an entire endemic avifauna, based on IUCN Red List criteria. The island of New Britain, east of New Guinea, is of very high global conservation importance, and home to 37 endemic or restricted-range bird species. Analysis suggests 12% of forest cover was lost between 1989 and 2000, including over 20% of forest under 100 m altitude, with substantial areas cleared for commercial oil palm plantations. Application of the IUCN Red List criteria to these new data on area of remaining forest and rates of deforestation indicates that many species are more threatened than previously realised, with the total number of threatened or near threatened species increasing from 12 to 21. Thus, this study highlights the urgency of establishing and effectively managing protected areas in suitable lowland forests of New Britain. More broadly, it demonstrates another potential of remote sensing to assist strategic conservation decisions.

A B S T R A C T Temperature increases can impact biodiversity and predicting their effects is one of the main challenges facing global climate-change research. Ectotherms are sensitive to temperature change and, although predictions indicate that tropical species are highly vulnerable to global warming, they remain one of the least studied groups with respect to the extent of physiological variation and local extinction risks. We model the extinction risks for a tropical heliothermic teiid lizard (Kentropyx calcarata) integrating previously obtained information on in-traspecific phylogeographic structure, eco-physiological traits and contemporary species distributions in the Amazon rainforest and its ecotone to the Cerrado savannah. We also investigated how thermal-biology traits vary throughout the species' geographic range and the consequences of such variation for lineage vulnerability. We show substantial variation in thermal tolerance of individuals among thermally distinct sites. Thermal critical limits were highly correlated with operative environmental temperatures. Our physiological/climatic model predicted relative extinction risks for local populations within clades of K. calcarata for 2050 ranging between 26.1% and 70.8%, while for 2070, extinction risks ranged from 52.8% to 92.8%. Our results support the hypothesis that tropical-lizard taxa are at high risk of local extinction caused by increasing temperatures. However, the thermo-physiological differences found across the species' distribution suggest that local adaptation may allow persistence of this tropical ectotherm in global warming scenarios. These results will serve as basis to further research to investigate the strength of local adaptation to climate change. Persistence of Kentropyx cal-carata also depends on forest preservation, but the Amazon rainforest is currently under high deforestation rates. We argue that higher conservation priority is necessary so the Amazon rainforest can fulfill its capacity to absorb the impacts of temperature increase on tropical ectotherms during climate change.

The world's large terrestrial mammalian carnivores and herbivores (henceforth, megafauna) has been severely impacted by humans worldwide. Although this impact across the globe is variable, there has been little information quantifying this impact on biodiversity. Here, we use a macroecological modeling approach to evaluate the impact of different human activities on megafauna species richness at global and biogeographical scales with respect to seven human-altered landscapes variables. At both global and biogeographical scales, we found that human accessibility, human footprint, and small livestock density, had the most negative effects on megafauna species richness, whereas large livestock density, wilderness, and natural protected areas, were more positively associated with megafauna species richness. Our results indicate that megafauna can indeed persist in human-modified landscapes, but different types of human activity can differentially influence species richness. Thus, although continued human impact such as urban, livestock and agricultural development continues to represent a threat to most megafauna, their future viability is potentially compatible with several global change factors we examined. Moreover, our findings are still consistent with the emphasis on conservation strategies that focus on habitat protection to maximize the conservation of megafaunal richness. We urge stronger national and international policy commitments inclusive of multi-use landscapes, greater anti-poaching enforcement, and the development of wildlife-friendly policy incentives for the managers of private and communal land. We also advise caution in interpreting our results, and believe local and regional scale population monitoring programs are still necessary to better facilitate coexistence with humans.