Giving Compass' Take:
- Adele Peters discusses a study out of Yale which suggests that human land-use practices will threaten 1,700 species with extinction in the next 50 years.
- What needs to change about human land use to prevent these species from being endangered? What role must the social sector play to make those changes in human behavior?
- Learn about the first mammal to be made extinct by human-induced climate change.
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In 50 years, as cities, farms, and other development continues to sprawl into wildlife habitat around the world, 1,700 species will be at greater risk of extinction, says a [recent] study from Yale ecologists.
“We’re finding a really dire picture,” says Walter Jetz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies... “We were able to identify some of the hotspots of future biodiversity impact purely from expected land use changes, and we found thousands of species that we really need to worry about.”
The researchers looked at four different scenarios for human land use–based on population growth and economic changes–and then compared that to the geographic range of 19,400 species. Under a middle-of-the-road scenario, 886 amphibians, 436 birds, and 376 mammals would lose so much habitat that they would be at much higher risk of extinction.
Read the full article about extinction by Adele Peters at Fast Company