mass extinction – Desdemona Despair

The global Living Planet Index, 1970-2020. The LPI is based on 34,836 monitored populations of 5,495 vertebrate species. The white line represents the index value, and the shaded areas represent the statistical uncertainty surrounding the value. Graphic: WWF / ZSL

October 19, 2024

Global biodiversity report shows “catastrophic decline” in wildlife populations – “In just my lifetime, 50 years, we’ve seen a decline of 73 percent in the average size of these wildlife populations”

By Molly McCrea 18 October 2024 (CBS News) – A shocking new report on global biodiversity is detailing what it calls “a catastrophic decline” in wildlife populations ahead of a major international conference on biodiversity. On Monday, 21 October 2024, the United Nations will convene a two-week conference in Cali, Colombia called COP16. On the agenda […]

Geographical pattern of the primary drivers of deteriorating status among amphibians. a,b, The primary drivers of deteriorating status among amphibians during 1980–2004 (482 species; a) and 2004–2022 (306 species; b). Cell colour was determined by the primary driver impacting the most species. Where two primary drivers equally contribute to a cell, an intermediate colour is shown. The stars indicate where the primary driver is undetermined or there are numerous primary drivers. The cell area is 7,775 km2. Graphic: Luedtke, et al., 2023 / Nature

October 29, 2023

Climate change emerges as major driver of amphibian declines, new research finds – “It’s a gut punch and an awakening”

By JoAnn Adkins 4 October 2023 (FIU) – Amphibians are in trouble and in desperate need of conservation action, according to a new global assessment of the world’s amphibian population. Salamanders are experiencing the greatest decline in numbers, but frogs, toads, newts, and salamanders throughout the Neotropics — extending from South Florida and Caribbean islands […]

Number of generic extinctions per century among in different classes of vertebrates. The low number of reptiles and amphibia, which underestimate the magnitude of extinction pattern, is probably the result of the lack of information in earlier centuries, where very few species had been described. The dotted line represents the background extinction rate. Graphic: Ceballos and Ehrlich, 2023 / PNAS

September 30, 2023

Study finds human-driven mass extinction is eliminating entire branches of the tree of life – “We’re losing our only known living companions in the entire universe”

By Sean Cummings 18 September 2023 (Stanford News) – The passenger pigeon. The Tasmanian tiger. The Baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin. These rank among the best-known recent victims of what many scientists have declared the sixth mass extinction, as human actions are wiping out vertebrate animal species hundreds of times faster than they would otherwise […]

The Trinity test fireball, 25 thousandths of a second after its detonation at the Alamogordo bombing range in New Mexico at 5:29 a.m. Mountain time on 16 July 1945. Photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory

September 10, 2023

The atomic bomb laid down the marker for humanity’s era of catastrophic change – “An observable, unambiguous change in the physical properties or fossil content of the strata”

By Stephen Trimble 3 September 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – Christopher Nolan believes J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived. “By unleashing nuclear power,” the film director concludes, “he gave us the power to destroy ourselves.” Nolan might exaggerate, but Oppenheimer, the subject of Nolan’s hit movie, is surely worthy of the […]

Carbon dioxide emission reductions, in gigatons, required to limit warming to 2°C if climate action action were taken in each year from 2000 to 2029. Data: Robbie Andrew / Global Carbon Project. Graphic: Clayton Aldern / Grist

September 10, 2023

Humans are releasing greenhouse gases at level unprecedented in geologic history – “Uncertainty is not our friend”

By Saul Elbein 7 September 2023 (The Hill) – Human civilization came to be thanks to the comparatively stable climate of the past 10,000 years. But the unchecked burning of fossil fuels is undermining that foundation, according to a leading climate scientist. “There is no analog in the past for the rapid warming” we are […]

Maps showing the global distribution of animals with decreasing (top), stable (middle) or increasing (bottom) populations combining data from all taxonomic groups. Numbers of species were counted within each 1° × 1° grid cell covering the globe, using a Behrmann’s equal area projection. Graphic: Finn, et al., 2023 / Biological Reviews

May 29, 2023

Global loss of biodiversity is significantly more alarming than previously suspected – “Almost half of animals on Earth for which assessments are available are currently declining. To make matters worse, many of the animal species that are thought to be non-threatened from extinction are in fact progressively declining”

23 May 2023 (Queen’s University Belfast) – A new study led by researchers from Queen’s University Belfast has shown that the global loss of biodiversity caused by human industrialisation is significantly more alarming than previously thought. The global-scale analysis has been published in the journal Biological Reviews. The study looked at changes in the population densities […]

The leadership of the U.N.-backed COP15 biodiversity conference applaud after passing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 19 December 2022. Photo: Julian Haber / UN Biodiversity / REUTERS

December 19, 2022

COP15 reaches deal to halt decline in nature by 2030 – Countries to allocate $200 billion per year for biodiversity initiatives but funds to biodiversity are miniscule – “We know the global economy and every company in it is negatively impacting biodiversity”

By Isla Binnie and Gloria Dickie 19 December 2022 MONTREAL (Reuters) – A United Nations summit approved on Monday a landmark global deal to protect nature and direct billions of dollars toward conservation but objections from key African nations, home to large tracts of tropical rainforest, held up its final passage. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity […]

A person wearing a carved wooden mask takes part with other people in a march during COP15, the two-week U.N. Biodiversity summit in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on 10 December 2022. Photo: Christinne Muschi / REUTERS

December 10, 2022

Activists dressed as birds and trees rally for nature at COP15 in Montreal – “We see what is happening and it is clearly not sufficient compared to our ambitions and our priorities”

By Gloria Dickie 10 December 2022 MONTREAL (Reuters) – Hundreds of people on Saturday braved sub-zero temperatures to march the streets of Montreal, the host city of this year’s U.N. biodiversity summit, demanding a strong new deal to protect nature worldwide. Wearing costumes to look like birds, trees, and caribou, activists said the COP15 summit could fail […]

Number of Western Monarch butterflies (left) and butterfly surveys (right), 1997-2021. In the western United States, the number of individual butterflies has been steadily decreasing over the past four decades, at a rate of around 1.6% every year, according to a March 2021 study in the journal Science. The iconic Monarch butterfly is one of the species in trouble. Warmer autumn temperatures, an effect of climate change, may be interfering with the butterflies’ hibernation-like period known as diapause. So rather than slowing down ahead of winter, the insects are staying awake longer, expending more energy, and eventually starving to death. In July 2022, the migratory monarch was added to the IUCN’s global endangered species list. Graphic: Catherine Tai / Reuters

December 10, 2022

The collapse of insects – “They’re the fabric tethering together every freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem across the planet”

By Julia Janicki, Gloria Dickie, Simon Scarr and Jitesh Chowdhury 6 December 2022 (Reuters) – As a boy in the 1960s, David Wagner would run around his family’s Missouri farm with a glass jar clutched in his hand, scooping flickering fireflies out of the sky. “We could fill it up and put it by our […]

Police monitor a protest opposing COP15, the UN Biodiversity Conference, in Montreal, on Wednesday, 7 December 2022. Photo: Graham Hughes / The Canadian Press

December 10, 2022

Monbiot: The US is a rogue state leading the world toward ecological collapse – “It’s a cliff edge”

By George Monbiot 9 December 2022 (The Guardian) – There are two extraordinary facts about the convention on biological diversity, whose members are meeting in Montreal now to discuss the global ecological crisis. The first is that, of the world’s 198 states, 196 are party to it. The second is the identity of those that aren’t. Take a […]