If conservation efforts are not improved, at least 558 mammal species globally will vanish within the next decade ie by 2100, researchers have said.
Even though they did not attribute the likely extinction of the wildlife to human actions, they were clear that “humans are almost entirely to be blamed” for all the mammal species that have gone extinct so far.
The researchers in their study published in the journal Science Advances said in the past 126,000 years at least 351 mammal species have gone extinct. But these extinctions that have occurred in the past centuries only represent the “tip of the iceberg”, compared to the looming extinctions of the next decades.
‘On the basis of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature)-based scenario, we predict 558 mammal species’ extinctions globally by the year 2100,’ the study authors wrote said the researchers in the journal Science Advances.
Currently there are 5,700 extant species of mammals. Out of them, 80 are known from historical reports since the year 1500, while all others are only known from fossil or zooarcheological records.
For the study, Tobias Andermann from University of Gothenburg in Sweden and his colleagues applied mathematical procedures that apply probabilities to statistical problems to the fossil records to estimate how mammalian extinction rates have changed over the past 126,000 years, inferring specific times of rate increases.
Based on current trends, the researchers predicted for the near future a rate escalation of “unprecedented magnitude.”
Further the authors said, ‘We are losing biodiversity every year, and with every extinct species and population, we lose unique evolutionary history.’
According to these models, “the extinctions that have occurred in the past centuries only represent the tip of the iceberg, compared to the looming extinctions of the next decades.”
However, the study authors noted that despite the high level of current threat, there is still a window of opportunity to prevent many species’ extinctions by improving conservation efforts.