Birds could signal mass extinction – UK extinction rate may be ten times higher than thought
(PhysOrg.com) — The first detailed measurements of current extinction rates for a specific region have shown that birds are the best group to use to track the losses. The study also reveals Britain may be losing species over ten times faster than records suggest, and the speed of loss is probably increasing: the losses from England alone may exceed one species every two weeks. The study, by Oxford University researchers, shows that many types of obscure organism in Britain are going extinct at the same rate as the birds – evidence supporting fears of a global mass extinction. A report of the research is published in an upcoming issue of the journal Biological Conservation as countries prepare to meet in Japan 18-29 October to discuss biodiversity conservation targets. ‘Biodiversity loss is arguably much more serious and more permanent than climate change,’ said Clive Hambler of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, lead author of the research. ‘But it’s impossible to know if policy targets to reduce the loss are being met without accurate measures of extinction rates. Until now, we had only crude estimates for a very few types of organism. Now we’ve got evidence that many groups of living things – lichens, bugs, moths, fish, plants and so on – are going extinct at a very similar rate to the birds.’ Using Britain’s uniquely detailed natural history records, the researchers found that 1-5% of the region’s species in many groups were lost since 1800, with higher losses in the Twentieth Century compared to the Nineteenth. Using further data from the USA and across the whole globe, the researchers show that the patterns of extinction in Britain are likely to be typical of those found on land and freshwater elsewhere. Mr Hambler said: ‘The birds are beautiful creatures, but they are also diverse, and many of them are specialised to particular habitats. This makes them sensitive to changes in their environment – such as loss of mature trees, or the drying out of swampy ground, or coastal development. And what makes them really special for monitoring extinction is that they are also exceptionally easy to study, anywhere in the world – so we can detect declines in their populations long before we notice losses of the more obscure things like slime moulds or mosses. It’s no coincidence they can signal environmental change.’ …
