PIXABAY, SPRINTER1973Vertebrate populations are declining at an alarming rate, with nearly a third of 27,600 species analyzed shrinking in both size and range, scientists reported in PNAS yesterday (July 10). The authors consider the situation the “sixth mass extinction.”
“The time to act is very short,” coauthor Paul Erlich of Stanford University tells The Guardian. “It will, sadly, take a long time to humanely begin the population shrinkage required if civilisation is to long survive, but much could be done on the consumption front and with ‘band aids’—wildlife reserves, diversity protection laws—in the meantime.”
In addition to doing a broad analysis of the state of 27,600 terrestrial vertebrate species, which is about half the known total on Earth, Erlich and colleagues gathered detailed information on 177 mammalian species. They found that all of them are living in geographic ranges at least 30 percent smaller than in decades past.
“We’ve got this stuff going on that we can’t really see because we’re not constantly counting ...
