One in four mammals facing extinction
One in four mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to a new study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The assessment was done by more than 1,700 experts from 130 countries over the last five years. Who's to blame? Humans, of course. The IUCN also updated its Red List of Threatened Species that now includes Tasmanian devils (above), parachute spiders, fishing cars, and a host of other beautiful beasties. From National Geographic:
"Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide," the study authors wrote...One in Four Mammals at Risk of Extinction, Parachute Spider, New Shrew on 2008 "Red List"
Humans are mostly to blame, as habitat loss, pollution, and hunting continue to squeeze at-risk species.<
"Perversely, the species that humans show greatest affinity toward—the largest mammals such as primates, big cats, and whales—are significantly more likely to be threatened with extinction," Barney Long, a biologist at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., said in an email.
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"on a long enough time line the survival rate for everyone drops to zero"
anyone else find it amazing that there's only 5,487 species of mammal?
So humans aren't on the list? Damn.
Fishing cars? Damn, what am I going to drive to the lake in?
Now fishing cats on the other hand...
Facing extinction over what timeframe? I didn't see this detail in TFA.
Given enough time, every species faces extinction.
Intriguingly, this little tidbit which was reported on the topic by the BBC doesn't appear in the national geographic account:
"This year's Red List looks at 5,487 mammals, and concludes that 1,141 are currently on the path towards disappearance. This may be an under-estimate, the authors caution, as there is not enough data to make an assessment in more than 800 cases."
Whoops. So, this point estimate they just invented using some arbitrary criterion for "on the path to extinction" has a confidence interval (which interval? 95%? 80%?) from ~300 to ~2000 species.
These kinds of scare headlines seem to do more to blunt the real issue than to expose it. If even a modest number of these "scientific" predictions were to have come true, the rain forest would be completely gone, and the planet would already be denuded of almost all life. Well, it isn't. That's not to say that we don't have real problems, but come on, one in four species? That's just outrageous.
#1,
Of course not. We're the fittest.
Actually, we ARE the fittest.
But not because we've evolved into supremacy. In fact, we've pretty much brought our own evolution to a halt.
We're the fittest because we've gained enough control over our environment that we can change local conditions to suit us. Which is where the other species get screwed.
Eventually we'll master genetic engineering to the degree that we can uplift ourselves and the other species we like.
NoneMoreBlack #4: No, the estimate is not from ~300 to ~2000 species. The 836 "data deficient" species are not included among the 1141 species considered threatened. See the IUCN 2008 Summary statistics, in particular table 3a.
Intriguingly, this tidbit from the original sources is missing in your own posting. Whoops.
What is worthy of criticism, though, is the claim that 1141/5488 = 1/4. It's 21%, much closer to 1/5. It's bad enough news without piling on innumeracy.
What about all the new mutants being created?
Mutations are almost always unfavourable, very rarely inconsequential, and almost never advantageous.
#10 The Unusual Suspect: actually, due to the redundancy in the genetic code, so-called silent mutations are (as the name would suggest) frequently inconsequential. (Insofar as the role of DNA is coding for proteins; what may be silent in a protein coding region may not be in a regulatory sequence.)
But I'm guessing you knew that, and were actually referring to non-silent mutations.
Wait, who could have expected this? An organization called the 'International Union for Conservation of Nature' is making incendiary and poorly-documented claims about the 'despoiling' of nature?
They couldn't possibly have any institutional or financial self-interest in making such claims, could they?
#3: This story was in the Metro this morning. 190 of those species they're talking about are at the "critically endangered" stage. From the figures they threw around, that equates to 100-200 or fewer individuals. There's not much chance that species like that will have the genetic diversity to survive long, even assuming they achieve a stable growth rate.
... and a link to the Metro article in question would have been good in my post.
"79% of asian primates face extinction"
asians need to quit eating them all eh?
TheHowl #14: What, did you expect the NRA to release a list of threatened species?
And as for "poorly-documented": are you serious? Go to www.iucnredlist.org and tell me if you still think it's poorly documented. (Hint: it's impeccably documented.)
To the trolls (whom I shouldn't be feeding): are you in denial that we're seriously threatening biodiversity, or do you just not care?
I thought that Tasmanian devils were having problems because they're attacked by a form of infectious cancer. I'm not sure how that's our fault. Unless we caused it somehow.
@19. I read the same thing about Tasmanian Devils. This sort of cuts into this story's credibility to me.
#13 nprnncbl, I did not know that. Thanks!
It's always a good day when I learn something new.
Jardine #19, Brett Burton #20: Did you RTFA? National Geographic does give this reason for the decline. Or let's see, where could we look up information about the status of Tasmanian devils; how about using the search box on the IUCN page, yielding this page, which indeed confirms the population loss due to infectious cancer ("devil facial tumour disease" -- even the name sounds bad). How does the fact that IUCN cites this cut into their credibility?
I would agree that it shouldn't be the poster child for anthropogenic extinction, but I think its prominence on this page is due to editorial selection, first by National Geographic, and then by David Pescovitz. It doesn't seem that IUCN has promoted the Tasmanian devil in this way.
RTFA? I'm doing well if I read the entire summary.
Let's ride bikes!
Jardine- sorry if I'm snippy; the comments here have saddened me about how much people care about the destruction of our planet.
But yes, let's ride bikes!
@18:
Do you give full credulity to NRA reports of the efficacy of concealed carry firearms? How about Altria Group studies of lung cancer rates?
"No, of course not! Why would I trust the reports, however well documented they seem to be, of groups who have such a vested interest in promoting their view over others'?"
Exactly.
The thing that you have to understand is that 1/4 of mammals would do the same to you if they got the chance. This is why we have to get them first. Also, they're probably quite tasty...except for the Tasmanian Devil. Those shots of chemo that they're taking for their cancer really mess with their flavour.
...
Seriously though, in an odd way the best way to save these beasties is probably to find a market for their flesh as well as a way to cheaply mass-breed them. We're pretty good at protecting the things that we eat.
TheHowl #26: Who are you quoting? Are you quoting what you think I'm saying?
You're making an ad hominem (ad organisationem?) attack about the IUCN, and have not provided any substantive alternative viewpoint. While it may be true that they have an inherent bias, try to refute their findings on their own merit rather than dismissing them outright.
You're right that I might not extend the same credulity to the NRA, but if I were to enter into an online discussion about the effects of concealed carry laws, I'd do a little research first to try to contribute.
ModusOperandi #27: "find ... a way to cheaply mass-breed them." Well, duh. The "market for their flesh" part, though, is precisely what threatens some species.
I find it odd that an article about the demise of mammals sports a photograph of a decidedly non-mammalian Tasmanian Devil (a marsupial)
I thought Tasmanian Devils were cartoon characters.
nprnncbl "ModusOperandi #27: "find ... a way to cheaply mass-breed them." Well, duh. The "market for their flesh" part, though, is precisely what threatens some species."
Hence the critical "as well as" between "find a market for their flesh" "a way to cheaply mass-breed them". Duh.
Marsupials are mammals.
That's a quarter of the pitiful remnant of the Mammals which we have not yet extinguished. Remember the mammoth hunters. We've done an awful lot of damage to the biosphere during the long period when people did not even notice species going extinct.
biodiversity waxes and wanes. From an anthropocentric point of view, humanity is in trouble, but there have been Great Dyings before as well as diversity explosions long before man or even bloody mammals.
Antinous #32: Thank you. I feel less alone.
ModusOperandi #31: I get what you're saying, but I still find it vacuous: let's deplete resources and magically replenish them!
MO#31: Sorry, I should be less flippant. If I understand you, competition and market forces (money) could provide the means to make threatened species meat production efficient, thus ensuring the species survival. I'm not trying to be dismissive; I just think it's wishful thinking and contradicted by what's really going on currently.
looks like we need a new "mammal credits" scheme. That should fix everything.
Until we start really thinking about population control, any of the "fixes" we come up with will just be temporary band-aids.
I'm probably not gonna forget that.
#19
I thought that Tasmanian devils were having problems because they're attacked by a form of infectious cancer. I'm not sure how that's our fault. Unless we caused it somehow.
Correct--they live on an island(I think or otherwise isolated landmass) and have very little genetic diversity, hence are very vulnerable to this particular form of cancer.
I think BB's readers tend to be pretty darn literate, with a decent knowledge of statistics and how they can be twisted. Given that, I can see a lot of people being startled that the number is so LOW. It's an unimpressive figure, on its face, until you dig deeper. You'd expect the figure to be at least 90%. I mean c'mon, Nigeria has more than 90% of its population living on less than a dollar a day! 25%? That's NOTHING!
In fact, it's about how many you'd expect to see: evolution demands there be a turnover, with species on the rise, and species dying out. You'd expect to see about 50% of them "dying out", so that 25% looks real small.
And any graph of species (X=number of species with that population, Y=population size) will clearly have a very loooong tail: they must have set the bar pretty low to get only 25%, right?
And "at risk"... well sheesh, every species on the planet is "at risk" of extinction.
So, yeah, I can see why people might be hugely underwhelmed by this data. The iucn.org site has way better data, though, fortunately. They even have an excel spreadsheet for you to play with the statistics to your heart's content!
Let's check it... OK, from that, there are:
76 "Extinct" mammalian species (717 total extinct species of every order).
2 "Extinct in the wild" (37).
188 "Critically Endangered" (1,665).
448 "Endangered" (2,488).
505 "Vulnerable" (4,309).
323 "Near Threatened" (2,448).
836 "No Data" (4,830).
3,110 "Least Concern" (16,226).
5,488 Total mammals (32,765 all species: sheesh, couldn't they find just three more, make a round number?)
Well... I'm still not overwhelmed. To get "1/4 of mammal species", they must have used every category other than "no data" and "least concern"!
I expected to be saying here "The numbers quoted in the press are just the critically endangered ones..." But nope.
Can someone help me mine and spin these numbers to be more scary?
And, perhaps more importantly, what does the planet Earth consider to be an acceptable number of mammalian species?
(Sits back with a stick, waiting to bash Creationists and IDers who emerge to take the bait.)
nprnncbl "MO#31: Sorry, I should be less flippant."
Yeah! Flippant is my schtick.
"If I understand you, competition and market forces (money) could provide the means to make threatened species meat production efficient, thus ensuring the species survival."
All I'm saying is that we're pretty good at protecting those species that directly benefit us, at least those that are to some degree domesticated (cats, dogs, cows, chickens, and the like). I'm not proposing laissez faire animal economics. I can't. I'm Canadian, which automatically makes me a little bit socialist.
"I'm not trying to be dismissive; I just think it's wishful thinking and contradicted by what's really going on currently."
It is wishful thinking. As a species, we only miss things when they're gone. This, in part, is why bald people are always reminiscing about high school.
Dewi Morgan #40: You have to take into account time scales; one of the IUCN criteria is based on an estimated probability of extinction within three generations (of the species in question), bounded below by 10 years and above by 100 years: I'll take a ballpark estimate and call that my lifetime.
Critically Endangered: 50% chance of extinction
Endangered: 20%
Vulnerable: 10%
So, guesstimating: the number of species of mammals I expect to go extinct in my lifetime (barring intervention) is .5*188+.2*488+.1*505=234.
That's more than three times as many species of mammals than have gone extinct since we started keeping track.
Does that put it in perspective?
I think it's the absolute numbers of species that are at risk that are the scariest, or maybe the rate compared to the extinction rate since the last big die-off.
The scariest thing to me, is that we have so few species to begin with. I kinda feel we should have enough biodiversity that we have 234 of them naturally dying off (and forming) each *day*, not each *lifetime*. Why are there so few? I didn't realise that evolution was so darn slow.
Dewi Morgan "I didn't realise that evolution was so darn slow."
Did you try getting bit by a radioactive spider? How about taking a bit hit of gamma radiation? You'll be evolving in no time after those! Also, you'll have cancer. Every thing is a tradeoff.
I knew that speciation events took millions of years to happen. But I just thought we had many hundreds of millions of species, so you'd expect them to be dying out pretty fast.
Apparently, earth isn't nearly as well endowed with species as I'd thought, and the loss of even one becomes something remarkable and tragic.
We do have tons of species, but they're mostly bugs and microbes.
Let's take the mammals we eat off the table--pun intended.
Loss of habitat has to be considered as a primary cause of endangerment. By habitat, I don't just mean space alone, but environmental changes that drain wetlands, pollute and change climate. Second, predatory mammals are hunted to near extinction, in large part by those who raise mammals we eat. This, too, is really a turf war. Third, the market in exotics for skin, teeth and other body parts for those who use them for decoration or "medicine" tips the balance for many species already under stress. As long as we are expanding our habitat and eating meat, the first two forces will lead us inexorably to extinction of our furry friends and the lessons they can teach us.
yes, yes...all according to plan, how I laugh as I watch them consume each other....
Modusoperandi:
Not really "tons" of them, except in the absolute literal biomass sense.
The 32,765 I quoted above includes (and is mostly made up of) invertebrates.
That's not a lot of species of anything.
Admittedly, not sure the 32k includes microbes, though.