 |
|
New study pinpoints epicenters of Earth's imminent extinctions
December 13, 2005Groups rally to safeguard hundreds of imperiled species
Safeguarding 595 sites around the world would help stave off an imminent global extinction crisis, according to new research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org).
Conducted by scientists working with the 52 member organizations of the Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE -- www.zeroextinction.org), the study identifies 794 species threatened with imminent extinction, each of which is in need of urgent conservation action at a single remaining site on Earth.
The study 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 595 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," he added. "We have a moral obligation to act. The science is in, and we are almost out of time."
"We now know where the emergencies are: the species that will be tomorrow's dodos unless we act quickly," said Taylor Ricketts, lead author of the study. "The good news is we still have time to protect them."
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.
Also published today are a site map and a report that details the actions required to save these sites and species. These items, along with a searchable database of sites, web links and media contacts for the Alliance's 52 member organizations, and photos of AZE sites and species for media use, can be found at: www.zeroextinction.org/press.htm
World Wildlife Fund
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," he added. "We have a moral obligation to act. The science is in, and we are almost out of time."
"We now know where the emergencies are: the species that will be tomorrow's dodos unless we act quickly," said Taylor Ricketts, lead author of the study. "The good news is we still have time to protect them."
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.
Also published today are a site map and a report that details the actions required to save these sites and species. These items, along with a searchable database of sites, web links and media contacts for the Alliance's 52 member organizations, and photos of AZE sites and species for media use, can be found at: www.zeroextinction.org/press.htm
World Wildlife Fund
Extinction Current Events and Extinction News RSSSmithsonian scientists find the frog legs trade may facilitate spread of pathogens
Most countries throughout the world participate in the $40-million-per-year culinary trade of frog legs in some way, with 75 percent of frog legs consumed in France, Belgium and the United States.
Forget all about it: Traumatic memories can be erased
It is well known that fear memories are permanent. However, a recent paper in Science, evaluated by three Faculty Members for F1000, reports an extraordinary finding that supports the use of a drug to control recollections of traumatic incidents.
DNA barcodes: Creative new uses span health, fraud, smuggling, history, more
The scientific ability to quickly and accurately identify species through DNA "barcoding" is being embraced and applied by a growing legion of global authorities - from medical and agricultural researchers to police and customs authorities to palaeontologists and others.
The last European hadrosaurs lived in the Iberian Peninsula
Spanish researchers have studied the fossil record of hadrosaurs, the so-called 'duck-billed' dinosaurs, in the Iberian Peninsula for the purpose of determining that they were the last of their kind to inhabit the European continent before disappearing during the K/T extinction event that occurred 65.5 million years ago.
Losing your tongue
Elder Tommy George has not spoken his aboriginal language of Kuku Thaypan for three years, since his brother died. "It might die in the throat, but it stays alive in the heart," he said to the Queensland Courier-Mail in June, 2009.
Volcanoes played pivotal role in ancient ice age, mass extinction
Researchers here have discovered the pivotal role that volcanoes played in a deadly ice age 450 million years ago. Perhaps ironically, these volcanoes first caused global warming -- by releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When they stopped erupting, Earth's climate was thrown off balance, and the ice age began.
Getting on 'the GABA receptor shuttle' to treat anxiety disorders
There are increasingly precise molecular insights into ways that stress exposure leads to fear and through which fear extinction resolves these fear states.
Clemson researchers say algae key to mass extinctionss
Algae, not asteroids, were the key to the end of the dinosaurs, say two Clemson University researchers. Geologist James W. Castle and ecotoxicologist John H. Rodgers have published findings that toxin producing algae were a deadly factor in mass extinctions millions of years ago.
Catching a killer one spore at a time
A workshop at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama has dramatically improved the ability of conservationists and regulatory agencies to monitor the spread of chytridiomycosis-one of the deadliest frog diseases on Earth.
Do 3 meals a day keep fungi away?
The fact that they eat a lot - and often - may explain why most people and other mammals are protected from the majority of fungal pathogens, according to research from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
More Extinction Current Events and Extinction News Articles
 |
Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago by Douglas H. Erwin (Author) Some 250 million years ago, the earth suffered the greatest biological crisis in its history. Around 95% of all living species died out--a global catastrophe far greater than the dinosaurs' demise 65 million years ago. How this happened remains a mystery. But there are many competing theories. Some blame huge volcanic eruptions that covered an area as large as the continental United States; others argue for sudden changes in ocean levels and chemistry, including burps of methane gas; and still others cite the impact of an extraterrestrial object, similar to what caused the dinosaurs' extinction. Extinction is a paleontological mystery story. Here, the world's foremost authority on the subject provides a fascinating overview of the evidence for and against a whole host of... | |
 |
Extinction (Forgotten Realms: R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider, Book 4) by Lisa Smedman (Author) The New York Times best-seller is now in paperback! Now available in paperback, Extinction is the fourth title in the epic Forgotten Realms series about one of the most popular races in the setting. This title landed on the New York Times best-seller list for two straight weeks upon initial hardcover release. Best-selling author R.A. Salvatore wrote the prologue to Extinction and continues to consult on the series, lending his expertise as the author who brought drow society to the forefront of the Forgotten Realms setting. | |
 |
Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? by David M. Raup (Author), Stephen Jay Gould (Introduction) The science of extinction is a lively and moveable feast of scientific speculation and research. Scientist/author David Raup takes the subject of nature's disappearing act to task, covering everything from the Ice Age Blitzkreig to the fate of the marshes on Martha's Vineyard, the extinction of flying reptiles to mankind's impact on tropical reefs. Graphs. | |
 |
Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions by Tony Hallam (Author) In Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities, renowned geologist Tony Hallam takes us on a tour of the Earth's history, and of the cataclysmic events, as well as the more gradual extinctions, that have punctuated life on Earth throughout the past 500 million years. While comparable books in this field of study tend to promote only one likely cause of mass extinctions, such as extraterrestrial impact, volcanism, and or climatic cooling, Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities breaks new ground, as the first book to attempt an objective coverage of all likely causes, including sea-level and climatic changes, oxygen deficiency in the oceans, volcanic activity, and extraterrestrial impact. Hallam focuses on the so-called 'big five' mass extinctions, at the end of the Ordovician,... | |
 |
Resident Evil - Extinction (Widescreen Special Edition) Starring: Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Ali Larter, Iain Glen, Ashanti Directed By: Russell Mulcahy Milla Jovovich is back in the third chapter of the hugely successful Resident Evil franchise! This action-packed horror film is set in the Nevada desert and filled with intense special effects and more zombie terror! Las Vegas means fun in the sun. Well, at least the sun is still there. Except for a few rusting landmarks, it looks pretty much like the rest of the desert - or the whole country, for that matter. The crowds are now flesh-eating zombies: the mass undead, the oozing, terrifying sludge of what remains. Here, the newly upgraded Alice, along with her crew (Oded Fehr, Mike Epps, Ali Larter, Ashanti) will make a final stand against evil - with one goal: to turn the undead dead again.
Beyond Resident Evil: Extinction | |
 |
When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time by Michael Benton (Author) "The focus is the most severe mass extinction known in earth's history….The science on which the book is based is up-to-date, thorough, and balanced. Highly recommended."—Choice Today it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago that killed half of all species then living. Far less known is a much greater catastrophe that took place at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago: ninety percent of life was destroyed, including saber-toothed reptiles and their rhinoceros-sized prey on land, as well as vast numbers of fish and other species in the sea. This book documents not only what happened during this gigantic mass extinction but also the recent rekindling of the idea of catastrophism. Was the end-Permian... | |
 |
Countdown to Extinction by Megadeth | |
 |
The Sixth Extinction: Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind by Terry Glavin (Author) The Sixth Extinction is a haunting account of the age in which we live. Ecologists are calling it the Sixth Great Extinction, and the world isn?t losing just its ecological legacy; also vanishing is a vast human legacy of languages and our ways of living, seeing, and knowing. Terry Glavin confirms that we are in the midst of a nearly unprecedented, catastrophic vanishing of animals, plants, and human cultures. He argues that the language of environmentalism is inadequate in describing the unraveling of the vast system in which all these extinctions are actually related. And he writes that we?re no longer gaining knowledge with every generation. We?re losing it.
|
The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind by Richard E. Leakey (Author), Roger Lewin (Contributor) Chronicling five times in the history of the earth in which more than half of all living species disappeared in a geological instant, a geological study states that we are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction and presents supporting evidence. Reprint. NYT. |
|
The Extinction of Middle-Class America by Mytu Sense Ed-op piecesKindle blogs are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you're not wirelessly connected. And unlike RSS readers which often only provide headlines, blogs on Kindle give you full text content and images, and are updated wirelessly throughout the day. |
| © 2009 BrightSurf.com |