UN Report: 1 Million Animal And Plant Species At Risk Of Extinction

A recent United Nations scientific report documents the “unprecedented” decline in global biodiversity that has alarming implications for human health, prosperity and long-term survival

by GrrlScientist for Forbes | @GrrlScientist

Agriculture has an insatiable appetite for new land. Seven million hectares of tropical forests were cut down each year between 2000 and 2010, with farmland growing by six million hectares over the same period. Farming destroys biodiversity and entire ecosystems, pollutes soils and watersheds with harmful chemicals, and leaves wildlife homeless.
(Credit: Angela Marie / Flickr / CC BY 2.0)

It’s long been no secret that people are destroying the natural world all around the planet at a rapidly accelerating pace, but a landmark UN intergovernmental analysis released on Monday assessed the state of global biodiversity and finds that the devastation is proceeding at a rate that is tens to hundreds of times faster than during the past ten million years (Figure 3B and C) — a rate never seen before in history — and could plunge the planet into a sixth mass extinction event.

Figure 3. A substantial proportion of assessed species are threatened with extinction and overall trends are deteriorating, with extinction rates increasing sharply in the past century. (B) Extinctions since 1500 for vertebrate groups. Rates for Reptiles and Fishes have not been assessed for all species. © Red List Index of species survival for taxonomic groups that have been assessed for the IUCN Red List at least twice. A value of 1 is equivalent to all species being categorized as Least Concern; a value of zero is equivalent to all species being classified as Extinct. Data derive from the IUCN Red List.
(Credit: IPBES Summary For Policymakers report.)

According to the new Report, entitled Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), more than one million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction (Figure 3A) — many of which are predicted to be pushed into extinction within just a few decades — thanks to decades of rampant poisoning, looting, vandalism and wholesale destruction of the planet’s…