New study found that the population numbers of over half of the animal species that live on Earth’s surface are now declining.
The research, which was just released, is the most extensive of its sort to date and evaluates how population densities have changed over time for more than 70,000 animal species from all over the world’s surface.
The findings, according to experts from Queen’s University Belfast, are a “drastic alert” since the rate of biodiversity loss due by industrialization in the world is far higher than previously believed.
They found that 48% of species on Earth are currently undergoing declines in their population sizes, whereas less than 3% of them are increasing in population size.
The extent of species going extinct has traditionally been measured by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) threat conservation categories, which found that 28% of life on Earth is currently threatened with extinction.
However, the new research used a global-scale analysis of a different measure of extinction risk, which was “population trends”.
The researchers found that the magnitude of the extinction crisis is considerably more severe than shown by the traditional measure based on threat categories.
They also found that 33% of species currently considered “safe” by the IUCN conservation categories are in fact declining towards risk of extinction.
Meanwhile, the analysis shows that the lack of species with increasing populations shows that other species are not evolving to take the place of extinct species in the ecosystem.
“This new study method and global-scale analysis provides a clearer picture about the true extent of global erosion of biodiversity that the traditional approach cannot offer,” Dr Daniel Pincheira-Donoso, senior lecturer in evolutionary biology and macroecology at Queen’s University Belfast, said.
“Our work is a drastic alert about the current magnitude of this crisis that has already devastating impacts on the stability of nature as a whole, and on human health and wellbeing.”
Catherine Finn, PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast and leading author on the research, added: “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.”
One of the greatest threats to humanity’s survival in the future decades is the loss of global biodiversity, which has an impact on how ecosystems work, how food is produced, how illnesses spread, and how the world economy remains stable.