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Future looks bleak for many species

MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT

Globe and Mail Update

October 6, 2008


TORONTO — The most exhaustive study ever undertaken on the future of mammals, the broad family of animals to which humans also belong, has found that more than a third of all marine species and a quarter of those living on land are at risk of extinction.

The study, appearing in the current issue of the journal Science and conducted by more than 1,700 experts from 130 countries, concluded that humans are the biggest threat to other mammals. Wild habitat loss and hunting “are by far the main threats,” it said, although many marine species are also being affected by pollution and accidental mortality through ship collisions and entanglement in nets.

“Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide,” the study said.

The research indicated that the larger the size of mammal, the more likely it is to face threats to its survival. Even many of the animals not at risk of outright extinction are also in decline, with population levels falling for half of all mammal species.

A family of elephants stand under a tree in Samburu game reserve of northern Kenya. The African elephant's future is again at stake – it has moved from vulnerable to near threatened on the IUCN Red List. Antony Njuguna/Reuters

A family of elephants stands under a tree in Samburu game reserve of northern Kenya. The African elephant's future is again at stake – it has moved from vulnerable to near threatened on the IUCN Red List.  (Antony Njuguna/Reuters)

The findings suggest that without strong conservation action, big iconic animals such as polar bears, great apes and hippos will soon be rare or not existent, at least in the wild, while mammals will be dominated by such small creatures as rodents and bats, which seem to be doing very well.

The research is considered the most comprehensive ever undertaken of the 5,487 different species of mammalian, which are found in almost every region and ecosystem of the world. Although the biologists who did the assessment, led by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, didn't have enough information to determine the outlook for every species, of those for which adequate data were available, 1,139 faced the possibility of extinction.

Of those at risk, the plight of 188 was so dire that researchers deemed them “critically endangered,” with a high probability that they won't be able to survive much longer. Chief among these is the Baiji, a rare freshwater dolphin that lives only in China's Yangtze River and is considered possibly extinct.

The study said that without conservation measures, the “status of mammals will likely deteriorate further in the near future.”

The bigger animals seem to be more at risk because they tend to have lower population densities, reproduce more slowly because they live longer, and more likely to be hunted.