Due to humans, extinction risk for 1,700 animal species to increase by 2070 – “Losses in species populations can irreversibly hamper the functioning of ecosystems and human quality of life”
By Kendall Teare
4 March 2019
(Yale News) – As humans continue to expand our use of land across the planet, we leave other species little ground to stand on. By 2070, increased human land-use is expected to put 1,700 species of amphibians, birds, and mammals at greater extinction risk by shrinking their natural habitats, according to a study by Yale ecologists published in Nature Climate Change.
To make this prediction, the ecologists combined information on the current geographic distributions of about 19,400 species worldwide with changes to the land cover projected under four different trajectories for the world scientists have agreed on as likely. These potential paths represent reasonable expectations about future developments in global society, demographics, and economics.
“Our findings link these plausible futures with their implications for biodiversity,” said Walter Jetz, co-author and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of forestry and environmental studies at Yale. “Our analyses allow us to track how political and economic decisions — through their associated changes to the global land cover — are expected to cause habitat range declines in species worldwide.”
The study shows that under a middle-of-the-road scenario of moderate changes in human land-use about 1,700 species will likely experience marked increases in their extinction risk over the next 50 years: They will lose roughly 30-50% of their present habitat ranges by 2070. These species of concern include 886 species of amphibians, 436 species of birds, and 376 species of mammals — all of which are predicted to have a high increase in their risk of extinction.
a–c, The average (+/– 95% CI) projected HSR per SSP as a percentage of 2015. d–f, Counts of potentially up-listed species. The three paired bars in each SSP denote counts of elevated threat status for the 2015–2030, 2015–2050 and 2015–2070 epochs, respectively, and each pair addresses no regain (left bar) and regain assumption (right bar). In SSP2 we consider species currently designated as LC or DD with projected HSR of <20,000 km2 and >10% loss of 2015 HSR as becoming NT, and species with projected HSR of <20 km2 as VU. Species currently listed as VU or EN with projected >50% loss of 2015 HSR receive a future designation of CR. Graphic: Powers and Jetz, 2019 / Nature Climate Change
Among them are species whose fates will be particularly dire, such as the Lombok cross frog (Indonesia), the Nile lechwe (South Sudan), the pale-browed treehunter (Brazil) and the curve-billed reedhaunter (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay) which are all predicted to lose around half of their present day geographic range in the next five decades. These projections and all other analyzed species can be examined at the Map of Life website.
“The integration of our analyses with the Map of Life can support anyone keen to assess how species may suffer under specific future land-use scenarios and help prevent or mitigate these effects,” said Ryan P. Powers, co-author and former postdoctoral fellow in the Jetz Lab at Yale.
Species living in Central and East Africa, Mesoamerica, South America, and Southeast Asia will suffer the greatest habitat loss and increased extinction risk. But Jetz cautioned the global public against assuming that the losses are only the problem of the countries within whose borders they occur.
“Losses in species populations can irreversibly hamper the functioning of ecosystems and human quality of life,” said Jetz. “While biodiversity erosion in far-away parts of the planet may not seem to affect us directly, its consequences for human livelihood can reverberate globally. It is also often the far-away demand that drives these losses — think tropical hardwoods, palm oil, or soybeans — thus making us all co-responsible.”
The study was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Due to humans, extinction risk for 1,700 animal species to increase by 2070
ABSTRACT: Habitat transformations caused by human land-use change are considered major drivers of ongoing biodiversity loss1,2,3, and their impact on biodiversity is expected to increase further this century4,5,6. Here, we used global decadal land-use projections to year 2070 for a range of shared socioeconomic pathways, which are linked to particular representative concentration pathways, to evaluate potential losses in range-wide suitable habitat and extinction risks for approximately 19,400 species of amphibians, birds and mammals. Substantial declines in suitable habitat are identified for species worldwide, with approximately 1,700 species expected to become imperilled due to land-use change alone. National stewardship for species highlights certain South American, Southeast Asian and African countries that are in particular need of proactive conservation planning. These geographically explicit projections and model workflows embedded in the Map of Life infrastructure are provided to facilitate the scrutiny, improvements and future updates needed for an ongoing and readily updated assessment of changing biodiversity. These forward-looking assessments and informatics tools are intended to support national conservation action and policies for addressing climate change and land-use change impacts on biodiversity.
