13/12/2005
- Washington, DC – Safeguarding hundreds of sites around
the world would help stave off an imminent global extinction
crisis, according to new research. Conducted
by scientists working with the 52 member organizations
of the Alliance for Zero Extinction, which includes WWF,
the study identifies 794 species in 595 sites around the
world that are threatened with imminent extinction, each
of which is in need of urgent conservation action.
"These are the last refuges of
severely threatened species, those that live on just one
farm, one mountaintop, or one stream," said Taylor
Ricketts, director of science at WWF-US and a lead author
of the study.
"This is new and very important
information. We hear lots of general talk about an extinction
crisis and a fair question is: Which species are next?
Where are they? We now have a vivid answer to that question:
794 faces on a map of 595 sites."
The study also found that just one-third
of the sites are known to have legal protection, and most
are surrounded by human population densities that are
approximately three times the global average. Conserving
these sites should be an urgent global priority involving
everyone from national governments to local communities,
the study’s authors state.
The United States ranks among the
ten countries with the most sites. These include Torrey
Pines in California, a cave in West Virginia, a pond in
Mississippi, and six sites in Hawaii. The whooping crane
and the recently rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker
are two spectacular American species that qualify for
inclusion. Particular concentrations of sites are also
found in the Andes of South America, in Brazil’s Atlantic
Forests, throughout the Caribbean, and in Madagascar.
“Although saving sites and species
is vitally important in itself, this is about much more,”
said Mike Parr, Secretary of AZE.
"At stake are the future genetic
diversity of Earth’s ecosystems, the global ecotourism
economy worth billions of dollars per year, and the incalculable
benefit of clean water from hundreds of key watersheds.
This is a one-shot deal for the human race. We have a
moral obligation to act. The science is in, and we are
almost out of time.”
Among the 794 imperiled mammals, birds,
amphibians, reptiles, and conifers are monkey-faced bats,
cloud rats, golden moles, poison frogs, exotic parrots
and hummingbirds, a hamster and a dormouse, a penguin,
crocodiles, iguanas, monkeys, and a rhinoceros. Among
the most intriguingly-named are: the Bloody Bay poison
frog, the volcano rabbit, the Ruo River screeching frog,
the Bramble Cay mosaic-tailed rat, the marvelous spatuletail
(a hummingbird), and the Sulu bleeding-heart (a dove).
While extinction is a natural process,
the authors note that current human-caused rates of species
loss are 100–1,000 times greater than natural rates. In
recent history, most species extinctions have occurred
on isolated islands following the introduction of invasive
predators such as cats and rats. This study shows that
the extinction crisis has now expanded to become a full-blown
assault on Earth’s major land masses, with the majority
of at-risk sites and species now found on continental
mountains and in lowland areas.
"These places present the most
clear opportunities to stem the extinction episode we
are in now," added Ricketts. "We now know where
the emergencies are. The good news is we still have time
to protect them.” |