Misplaced Pages

The Holocene extinction, also referred to as the Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing extinction event caused by human activities during the Holocene epoch. This extinction event spans numerous families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, impacting both terrestrial and marine species. Widespread degradation of biodiversity hotspots such as coral reefs and rainforests has exacerbated the crisis. Many of these extinctions are undocumented, as the species are often undiscovered before their extinctions.

Current extinction rates are estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates and are accelerating. Over the past 100–200 years, biodiversity loss has reached such alarming levels that some conservation biologists now believe human activities have triggered a mass extinction, or are on the cusp of doing so. As such, after the "Big Five" mass extinctions, the Holocene extinction event has been referred to as the sixth mass extinction. However, given the recent recognition of the Capitanian mass extinction, the term seventh mass extinction has also been proposed.

The Holocene extinction was preceded by the extinction of most large (megafaunal) animals during the Late Pleistocene, a decline attributed in part to human hunting. The prevailing theory is that human overhunting, coinciding with existing stress conditions, likely contributed to this decline. Examples from regions such as New Zealand, Madagascar, and Hawaii have shown how human colonization and habitat destruction have led to significant biodiversity losses. While debates persist about the exact role of human predation and habitat alteration, certain extinctions have been directly linked to these activities. Additionally, climate shifts at the end of the Pleistocene likely compounded these effects.

Over the course of the Late Holocene, human settlement of the previously uninhabited Pacific islands led to extinctions of hundreds of bird species, peaking around 1300 AD. Recent estimates suggest that roughly 12% of avian species have been lost to human activities over the last 126,000 years—double earlier estimates.

In the 20 century, the human population quadrupled, and the global economy grew twenty-five-fold. This period, often called the Great Acceleration, has intensified species' extinction. Humanity has become an unprecedented "global superpredator", preying on the adults apex predators, invading habitats of other species, and disrupting food webs.

The Holocene extinction continues into the 21st century, driven by anthropogenic global warming, human population growth, and increasing consumption—particularly among affluent societies. Factors such as rising meat production, deforestation, and the destruction of critical habitats compound these issues. Other drivers include overexploitation of natural resources, pollution, and climate change-induced shifts in ecosystems.

Major extinction events during this period have been recorded across all continents, including Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, North and South America, and various islands. The cumulative effects of deforestation, overfishing, ocean acidification, and wetland destruction have further destabilized ecosystems. Decline in amphibian populations, in particular, serves as an early indicator of broader ecological collapse.

Despite this grim outlook, there are efforts to mitigate biodiversity loss. Conservation initiatives, international treaties, and sustainable practices aim to address this crisis. However, without significant changes in global policies and individual behaviors, the Holocene extinction threatens to irreversibly alter the planet's ecosystems and the services they provide.

Background

Mass extinctions are characterized by the loss of at least 75% of species within a geologically short period of time (i.e., less than 2 million years). The Holocene extinction is also known as the "sixth extinction", as it is possibly the sixth mass extinction event, after the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, the Late Devonian extinction, the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, and the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. If the Capitanian extinction event is included among the first-order mass extinctions, the Holocene extinction would correspondingly be known as the "seventh extinction". The Holocene is the current geological epoch.

Overview

The precise timing of the Holocene extinction event remains debated, with no clear consensus on when it began or whether it should be considered distinct from the Quaternary extinction event. However, most scientists agree that human activities are the primary driver of the Holocene extinction. A 1998 survey conducted by the American Museum of Natural History found that 70% of biologists acknowledged an ongoing anthropogenic extinction event. Some researchers suggested that the activities of earlier archaic humans may have contributed to earlier extinctions, especially in Australia, New Zealand, and Madagascar. Even modest hunting pressure, combined with the vulnerability of large animals on isolated islands, is thought to have been enough to wipe out entire species. Only in the more recent stages of the Holocene have plants suffered extensive losses, which are also linked to human activities such as deforestation and land conversion.

Extinction rate

The contemporary rate of extinction is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the natural background extinction rate—the typical rate of species loss through natural evolutionary processes. One estimation suggested the rate could be as high as 10,000 times the background extinction rate, though this figure remains controversial. Theoretical ecologist Stuart Pimm has noted that the extinction rate for plants alone is 100 times higher than normal.

While some argue that the current extinction rates have not yet reached the catastrophic levels of past mass extinctions, Barnosky et al. (2011) and Hull et al. (2015) point out that extinction rates during past mass extinctions cannot be fully determined due to gaps in the fossil record. However, they agree that the ongoing biodiversity loss is nonetheless unprecedented. Estimates of species lost per year vary widely—from 1.5 to 40,000 species—but all indicate that human activity is driving this crisis.

In The Future of Life (2002), biologist Edward Osborne Wilson predicted that, if current trend continues, half of Earth's higher lifeforms could be extinct by 2100. More recent studies further support this view. A 2015 study on Hawaiian snails suggested that up to 7% of Earth’s species may already be extinct. A 2021 study also found that only around 3% of the planet's terrestrial surface remains ecologically and faunally intact—areas still with healthy populations of native species and minimal human footprint. A 2022 study suggests that if global warming continues, between 13% and 27% of terrestrial vertebrate species could be driven to extinction by 2100, with habitat destructions and co-extinctions accounting for the rest.

The 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, published by the United Nations IPBES, estimated that about one million species are currently at risk of extinction within decades due to human activities. Organized human existence is jeopardised by increasingly rapid destruction of the systems that support life on Earth, according to the report, the result of one of the most comprehensive studies of the health of the planet ever conducted. Moreover, the 2021 Economics of Biodiversity review, published by the UK government, asserts that "biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history." According to a 2022 study published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, a survey of more than 3,000 experts says that the extent of the mass extinction might be greater than previously thought, and estimates that roughly 30% of species "have been globally threatened or driven extinct since the year 1500." In a 2022 report, IPBES listed unsustainable fishing, hunting, and logging as some of the primary drivers of the global extinction crisis.

A 2023 study published in PLOS One shows that around two million species are threatened with extinction, double the estimate put forward in the 2019 IPBES report. According to a 2023 study published in PNAS, at least 73 genera of animals have gone extinct since 1500. If humans had never existed, the study estimates it would have taken 18,000 years for the same genera to have disappeared naturally, leading the authors to conclude that "the current generic extinction rates are 35 times higher than expected background rates prevailing in the last million years under the absence of human impacts" and that human civilization is causing the "rapid mutilation of the tree of life."

Attribution

We are currently, in a systematic manner, exterminating all non-human living beings.

There is widespread consensus among scientists that human activities—especially habitat destruction, resource consumption, and the elimination of species— are the main drivers of the current extinction crisis. Rising extinction rates among mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and other groups have led many scientists to declare a global biodiversity crisis.

Scientific debate

The description of recent extinction as a mass extinction has been debated among scientists. Stuart Pimm, for example, asserts that the sixth mass extinction "is something that hasn't happened yet – we are on the edge of it." Several studies posit that the Earth has entered a sixth mass extinction event, including a 2015 paper by Barnosky et al. and a November 2017 statement titled "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice", led by eight authors and signed by 15,364 scientists from 184 countries which asserted, among other things, that "we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be extirpated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century." The World Wide Fund for Nature's 2020 Living Planet Report says that wildlife populations have declined by 68% since 1970 as a result of overconsumption, population growth, and intensive farming, which is further evidence that humans have unleashed a sixth mass extinction event; however, this finding has been disputed by one 2020 study, which posits that this major decline was primarily driven by a few extreme outlier populations, and that when these outliers are removed, the trend shifts to that of a decline between the 1980s and 2000s, but a roughly positive trend after 2000. A 2021 report in Frontiers in Conservation Science which cites both of the aforementioned studies, says "population sizes of vertebrate species that have been monitored across years have declined by an average of 68% over the last five decades, with certain population clusters in extreme decline, thus presaging the imminent extinction of their species," and asserts "that we are already on the path of a sixth major extinction is now scientifically undeniable." A January 2022 review article published in Biological Reviews builds upon previous studies documenting biodiversity decline to assert that a sixth mass extinction event caused by anthropogenic activity is currently under way. A December 2022 study published in Science Advances states that "the planet has entered the sixth mass extinction" and warns that current anthropogenic trends, particularly regarding climate and land-use changes, could result in the loss of more than a tenth of plant and animal species by the end of the century. 12% of all bird species are threatened with extinction. A 2023 study published in Biological Reviews found that, of 70,000 monitored species, some 48% are experiencing population declines from anthropogenic pressures, whereas only 3% have increasing populations.

According to the UNDP's 2020 Human Development Report, The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene:

The planet's biodiversity is plunging, with a quarter of species facing extinction, many within decades. Numerous experts believe we are living through, or on the cusp of, a mass species extinction event, the sixth in the history of the planet and the first to be caused by a single organism—us.

The 2022 Living Planet Report found that vertebrate wildlife populations have plummeted by an average of almost 70% since 1970, with agriculture and fishing being the primary drivers of this decline.

Some scientists, including Rodolfo Dirzo and Paul R. Ehrlich, contend that the sixth mass extinction is largely unknown to most people globally and is also misunderstood by many in the scientific community. They say it is not the disappearance of species, which gets the most attention, that is at the heart of the crisis, but "the existential threat of myriad population extinctions."

Anthropocene

The abundance of species extinctions considered anthropogenic, or due to human activity, has sometimes (especially when referring to hypothesized future events) been collectively called the "Anthropocene extinction". Anthropocene is a term introduced in 2000. Some now postulate that a new geological epoch has begun, with the most abrupt and widespread extinction of species since the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago.

The term "anthropocene" is being used more frequently by scientists, and some commentators may refer to the current and projected future extinctions as part of a longer Holocene extinction. The Holocene–Anthropocene boundary is contested, with some commentators asserting significant human influence on climate for much of what is normally regarded as the Holocene Epoch. Some experts mark the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene at the onset of the industrial revolution. They also note that the official use of this term in the near future will heavily rely on its usefulness, especially for Earth scientists studying late Holocene periods.

It has been suggested that human activity has made the period starting from the mid-20th century different enough from the rest of the Holocene to consider it a new geological epoch, known as the Anthropocene, a term which was considered for inclusion in the timeline of Earth's history by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in 2016, but the proposal was rejected in 2024. To constitute the Holocene as an extinction event, scientists must determine exactly when anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions began to measurably alter natural atmospheric levels on a global scale, and when these alterations caused changes to global climate. Using chemical proxies from Antarctic ice cores, researchers have estimated the fluctuations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) gases in the Earth's atmosphere during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. Estimates of the fluctuations of these two gases in the atmosphere, using chemical proxies from Antarctic ice cores, generally indicate that the peak of the Anthropocene occurred within the previous two centuries: typically beginning with the Industrial Revolution, when the highest greenhouse gas levels were recorded.

Human ecology

A 2015 article in Science suggested that humans are unique in ecology as an unprecedented "global superpredator", regularly preying on large numbers of fully grown terrestrial and marine apex predators, and with a great deal of influence over food webs and climatic systems worldwide. Although significant debate exists as to how much human predation and indirect effects contributed to prehistoric extinctions, certain population crashes have been directly correlated with human arrival. Human activity has been the main cause of mammalian extinctions since the Late Pleistocene. A 2018 study published in PNAS found that since the dawn of human civilization, the biomass of wild mammals has decreased by 83%. The biomass decrease is 80% for marine mammals, 50% for plants, and 15% for fish. Currently, livestock make up 60% of the biomass of all mammals on Earth, followed by humans (36%) and wild mammals (4%). As for birds, 70% are domesticated, such as poultry, whereas only 30% are wild.

Historic extinction

Human activity

Activities contributing to extinctions

Extinction of animals, plants, and other organisms caused by human actions may go as far back as the late Pleistocene, over 12,000 years ago. There is a correlation between megafaunal extinction and the arrival of humans. Megafauna that are still extant also suffered severe declines that were highly correlated with human expansion and activity. Over the past 125,000 years, the average body size of wildlife has fallen by 14% as actions by prehistoric humans eradicated megafauna on all continents with the exception of Africa. Over the past 130,000 years, avian functional diversity has declined precipitously and disproportionately relative to phylogenetic diversity losses.

Human civilization was founded on and grew from agriculture. The more land used for farming, the greater the population a civilization could sustain, and subsequent popularization of farming led to widespread habitat conversion.

Habitat destruction by humans, thus replacing the original local ecosystems, is a major driver of extinction. The sustained conversion of biodiversity rich forests and wetlands into poorer fields and pastures (of lesser carrying capacity for wild species), over the last 10,000 years, has considerably reduced the Earth's carrying capacity for wild birds and mammals, among other organisms, in both population size and species count.

Other, related human causes of the extinction event include deforestation, hunting, pollution, the introduction in various regions of non-native species, and the widespread transmission of infectious diseases spread through livestock and crops.

Agriculture and climate change

Recent investigations into the practice of landscape burning during the Neolithic Revolution have a major implication for the current debate about the timing of the Anthropocene and the role that humans may have played in the production of greenhouse gases prior to the Industrial Revolution. Studies of early hunter-gatherers raise questions about the current use of population size or density as a proxy for the amount of land clearance and anthropogenic burning that took place in pre-industrial times. Scientists have questioned the correlation between population size and early territorial alterations. Ruddiman and Ellis' research paper in 2009 makes the case that early farmers involved in systems of agriculture used more land per capita than growers later in the Holocene, who intensified their labor to produce more food per unit of area (thus, per laborer); arguing that agricultural involvement in rice production implemented thousands of years ago by relatively small populations created significant environmental impacts through large-scale means of deforestation.

While a number of human-derived factors are recognized as contributing to rising atmospheric concentrations of CH₄ (methane) and CO₂ (carbon dioxide), deforestation and territorial clearance practices associated with agricultural development may have contributed most to these concentrations globally in earlier millennia. Scientists that are employing a variance of archaeological and paleoecological data argue that the processes contributing to substantial human modification of the environment spanned many thousands of years on a global scale and thus, not originating as late as the Industrial Revolution. Palaeoclimatologist William Ruddiman has argued that in the early Holocene 11,000 years ago, atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels fluctuated in a pattern which was different from the Pleistocene epoch before it. He argued that the patterns of the significant decline of CO₂ levels during the last ice age of the Pleistocene inversely correlate to the Holocene where there have been dramatic increases of CO₂ around 8000 years ago and CH₄ levels 3000 years after that. The correlation between the decrease of CO₂ in the Pleistocene and the increase of it during the Holocene implies that the causation of this spark of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere was the growth of human agriculture during the Holocene.

Climate change

One of the main theories explaining early Holocene extinctions is historic climate change. The climate change theory has suggested that a change in climate near the end of the late Pleistocene stressed the megafauna to the point of extinction. Some scientists favor abrupt climate change as the catalyst for the extinction of the megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene, most who believe increased hunting from early modern humans also played a part, with others even suggesting that the two interacted. In the Americas, a controversial explanation for the shift in climate is presented under the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, which states that the impact of comets cooled global temperatures. Despite its popularity among nonscientists, this hypothesis has never been accepted by relevant experts, who dismiss it as a fringe theory.

Contemporary extinction

History

Contemporary human overpopulation and continued population growth, along with per-capita consumption growth, prominently in the past two centuries, are regarded as the underlying causes of extinction. Inger Andersen, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, stated that "we need to understand that the more people there are, the more we put the Earth under heavy pressure. As far as biodiversity is concerned, we are at war with nature."

Some scholars assert that the emergence of capitalism as the dominant economic system has accelerated ecological exploitation and destruction, and has also exacerbated mass species extinction. CUNY professor David Harvey, for example, posits that the neoliberal era "happens to be the era of the fastest mass extinction of species in the Earth's recent history". Ecologist William E. Rees concludes that the "neoliberal paradigm contributes significantly to planetary unraveling" by treating the economy and the ecosphere as totally separate systems, and by neglecting the latter. Major lobbying organizations representing corporations in the agriculture, fisheries, forestry and paper, mining, and oil and gas industries, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, have been pushing back against legislation that could address the extinction crisis. A 2022 report by the climate think tank InfluenceMap stated that "although industry associations, especially in the US, appear reluctant to discuss the biodiversity crisis, they are clearly engaged on a wide range of policies with significant impacts on biodiversity loss."

The loss of animal species from ecological communities, defaunation, is primarily driven by human activity. This has resulted in empty forests, ecological communities depleted of large vertebrates. This is not to be confused with extinction, as it includes both the disappearance of species and declines in abundance. Defaunation effects were first implied at the Symposium of Plant-Animal Interactions at the University of Campinas, Brazil in 1988 in the context of Neotropical forests. Since then, the term has gained broader usage in conservation biology as a global phenomenon.

Big cat populations have severely declined over the last half-century and could face extinction in the following decades. According to 2011 IUCN estimates: lions are down to 25,000, from 450,000; leopards are down to 50,000, from 750,000; cheetahs are down to 12,000, from 45,000; tigers are down to 3,000 in the wild, from 50,000. A December 2016 study by the Zoological Society of London, Panthera Corporation and Wildlife Conservation Society showed that cheetahs are far closer to extinction than previously thought, with only 7,100 remaining in the wild, existing within only 9% of their historic range. Human pressures are to blame for the cheetah population crash, including prey loss due to overhunting by people, retaliatory killing from farmers, habitat loss and the illegal wildlife trade. Populations of brown bears have experienced similar population decline.

The term pollinator decline refers to the reduction in abundance of insect and other animal pollinators in many ecosystems worldwide beginning at the end of the twentieth century, and continuing into the present day. Pollinators, which are necessary for 75% of food crops, are declining globally in both abundance and diversity. A 2017 study led by Radboud University's Hans de Kroon indicated that the biomass of insect life in Germany had declined by three-quarters in the previous 25 years. Participating researcher Dave Goulson of Sussex University stated that their study suggested that humans are making large parts of the planet uninhabitable for wildlife. Goulson characterized the situation as an approaching "ecological Armageddon", adding that "if we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse." A 2019 study found that over 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction. The most significant drivers in the decline of insect populations are associated with intensive farming practices, along with pesticide use and climate change. The world's insect population decreases by around 1 to 2% per year.

We have driven the rate of biological extinction, the permanent loss of species, up several hundred times beyond its historical levels, and are threatened with the loss of a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century.

— Peter Raven, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in the foreword to their publication AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment

Various species are predicted to become extinct in the near future, among them some species of rhinoceros, primates, and pangolins. Others, including several species of giraffe, are considered "vulnerable" and are experiencing significant population declines from anthropogenic impacts including hunting, deforestation and conflict. Hunting alone threatens bird and mammalian populations around the world. The direct killing of megafauna for meat and body parts is the primary driver of their destruction, with 70% of the 362 megafauna species in decline as of 2019. Mammals in particular have suffered such severe losses as the result of human activity (mainly during the Quaternary extinction event, but partly during the Holocene) that it could take several million years for them to recover. Contemporary assessments have discovered that roughly 41% of amphibians, 25% of mammals, 21% of reptiles and 14% of birds are threatened with extinction, which could disrupt ecosystems on a global scale and eliminate billions of years of phylogenetic diversity. 189 countries, which are signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio Accord), have committed to preparing a Biodiversity Action Plan, a first step at identifying specific endangered species and habitats, country by country.

For the first time since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, we face a global mass extinction of wildlife. We ignore the decline of other species at our peril – for they are the barometer that reveals our impact on the world that sustains us.

— Mike Barrett, director of science and policy at WWF's UK branch

A 2023 study published in Current Biology concluded that current biodiversity loss rates could reach a tipping point and inevitably trigger a total ecosystem collapse.

Recent extinction

Recent extinctions are more directly attributable to human influences, whereas prehistoric extinctions can be attributed to other factors. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) characterizes 'recent' extinction as those that have occurred past the cut-off point of 1500, and at least 875 plant and animal species have gone extinct since that time and 2009. Some species, such as the Père David's deer and the Hawaiian crow, are extinct in the wild, and survive solely in captive populations. Other populations are only locally extinct (extirpated), still existent elsewhere, but reduced in distribution, as with the extinction of gray whales in the Atlantic, and of the leatherback sea turtle in Malaysia.

Since the Late Pleistocene, humans (together with other factors) have been rapidly driving the largest vertebrate animals towards extinction, and in the process interrupting a 66-million-year-old feature of ecosystems, the relationship between diet and body mass, which researchers suggest could have unpredictable consequences. A 2019 study published in Nature Communications found that rapid biodiversity loss is impacting larger mammals and birds to a much greater extent than smaller ones, with the body mass of such animals expected to shrink by 25% over the next century. Another 2019 study published in Biology Letters found that extinction rates are perhaps much higher than previously estimated, in particular for bird species.

The 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services lists the primary causes of contemporary extinctions in descending order: (1) changes in land and sea use (primarily agriculture and overfishing respectively); (2) direct exploitation of organisms such as hunting; (3) anthropogenic climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species spread by human trade. This report, along with the 2020 Living Planet Report by the WWF, both project that climate change will be the leading cause in the next several decades.

A June 2020 study published in PNAS posits that the contemporary extinction crisis "may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible" and that its acceleration "is certain because of the still fast growth in human numbers and consumption rates." The study found that more than 500 vertebrate species are poised to be lost in the next two decades.

Habitat destruction

Biomass of mammals on Earth as of 2018

Humans both create and destroy crop cultivar and domesticated animal varieties. Advances in transportation and industrial farming has led to monoculture and the extinction of many cultivars. The use of certain plants and animals for food has also resulted in their extinction, including silphium and the passenger pigeon. It was estimated in 2012 that 13% of Earth's ice-free land surface is used as row-crop agricultural sites, 26% used as pastures, and 4% urban-industrial areas.

In March 2019, Nature Climate Change published a study by ecologists from Yale University, who found that over the next half century, human land use will reduce the habitats of 1,700 species by up to 50%, pushing them closer to extinction. That same month PLOS Biology published a similar study drawing on work at the University of Queensland, which found that "more than 1,200 species globally face threats to their survival in more than 90% of their habitat and will almost certainly face extinction without conservation intervention".

Since 1970, the populations of migratory freshwater fish have declined by 76%, according to research published by the Zoological Society of London in July 2020. Overall, around one in three freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction due to human-driven habitat degradation and overfishing.

Some scientists and academics assert that industrial agriculture and the growing demand for meat is contributing to significant global biodiversity loss as this is a significant driver of deforestation and habitat destruction; species-rich habitats, such as the Amazon region and Indonesia being converted to agriculture. A 2017 study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) found that 60% of biodiversity loss can be attributed to the vast scale of feed crop cultivation required to rear tens of billions of farm animals. Moreover, a 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, Livestock's Long Shadow, also found that the livestock sector is a "leading player" in biodiversity loss. More recently, in 2019, the IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services attributed much of this ecological destruction to agriculture and fishing, with the meat and dairy industries having a very significant impact. Since the 1970s food production has soared to feed a growing human population and bolster economic growth, but at a huge price to the environment and other species. The report says some 25% of the Earth's ice-free land is used for cattle grazing. A 2020 study published in Nature Communications warned that human impacts from housing, industrial agriculture and in particular meat consumption are wiping out a combined 50 billion years of Earth's evolutionary history (defined as phylogenetic diversity) and driving to extinction some of the "most unique animals on the planet," among them the Aye-aye lemur, the Chinese crocodile lizard and the pangolin. Said lead author Rikki Gumbs:

We know from all the data we have for threatened species, that the biggest threats are agriculture expansion and the global demand for meat. Pasture land, and the clearing of rainforests for production of soy, for me, are the largest drivers – and the direct consumption of animals.

Urbanization has also been cited as a significant driver of biodiversity loss, particularly of plant life. A 1999 study of local plant extirpations in Great Britain found that urbanization contributed at least as much to local plant extinction as did agriculture.

Climate change

Climate change is expected to be a major driver of extinctions from the 21st century. Rising levels of carbon dioxide are resulting in influx of this gas into the ocean, increasing its acidity. Marine organisms which possess calcium carbonate shells or exoskeletons experience physiological pressure as the carbonate reacts with acid. For example, this is already resulting in coral bleaching on various coral reefs worldwide, which provide valuable habitat and maintain a high biodiversity. Marine gastropods, bivalves, and other invertebrates are also affected, as are the organisms that feed on them. Some studies have suggested that it is not climate change that is driving the current extinction crisis, but the demands of contemporary human civilization on nature. However, a rise in average global temperatures greater than 5.2 °C is projected to cause a mass extinction similar to the "Big Five" mass extinction events of the Phanerozoic, even without other anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity.

Overexploitation

Overhunting can reduce the local population of game animals by more than half, as well as reducing population density, and may lead to extinction for some species. Populations located nearer to villages are significantly more at risk of depletion. Several conservationist organizations, among them IFAW and HSUS, assert that trophy hunters, particularly from the United States, are playing a significant role in the decline of giraffes, which they refer to as a "silent extinction".

The surge in the mass killings by poachers involved in the illegal ivory trade along with habitat loss is threatening African elephant populations. In 1979, their populations stood at 1.7 million; at present there are fewer than 400,000 remaining. Prior to European colonization, scientists believe Africa was home to roughly 20 million elephants. According to the Great Elephant Census, 30% of African elephants (or 144,000 individuals) disappeared over a seven-year period, 2007 to 2014. African elephants could become extinct by 2035 if poaching rates continue.

Fishing has had a devastating effect on marine organism populations for several centuries even before the explosion of destructive and highly effective fishing practices like trawling. Humans are unique among predators in that they regularly prey on other adult apex predators, particularly in marine environments; bluefin tuna, blue whales, North Atlantic right whales, and over fifty species of sharks and rays are vulnerable to predation pressure from human fishing, in particular commercial fishing. A 2016 study published in Science concludes that humans tend to hunt larger species, and this could disrupt ocean ecosystems for millions of years. A 2020 study published in Science Advances found that around 18% of marine megafauna, including iconic species such as the Great white shark, are at risk of extinction from human pressures over the next century. In a worst-case scenario, 40% could go extinct over the same time period. According to a 2021 study published in Nature, 71% of oceanic shark and ray populations have been destroyed by overfishing (the primary driver of ocean defaunation) from 1970 to 2018, and are nearing the "point of no return" as 24 of the 31 species are now threatened with extinction, with several being classified as critically endangered. Almost two-thirds of sharks and rays around coral reefs are threatened with extinction from overfishing, with 14 of 134 species being critically endangered.

If this pattern goes unchecked, the future oceans would lack many of the largest species in today's oceans. Many large species play critical roles in ecosystems and so their extinctions could lead to ecological cascades that would influence the structure and function of future ecosystems beyond the simple fact of losing those species.

— Jonathan Payne, associate professor and chair of geological sciences at Stanford University

Disease

The decline of amphibian populations has also been identified as an indicator of environmental degradation. As well as habitat loss, introduced predators and pollution, Chytridiomycosis, a fungal infection accidentally spread by human travel, globalization, and the wildlife trade, has caused severe population drops of over 500 amphibian species, and perhaps 90 extinctions, including (among many others) the extinction of the golden toad in Costa Rica, the Gastric-brooding frog in Australia, the Rabb's Fringe-limbed Treefrog and the extinction of the Panamanian golden frog in the wild. Chytrid fungus has spread across Australia, New Zealand, Central America and Africa, including countries with high amphibian diversity such as cloud forests in Honduras and Madagascar. Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans is a similar infection currently threatening salamanders. Amphibians are now the most endangered vertebrate group, having existed for more than 300 million years through three other mass extinctions.

Millions of bats in the US have been dying off since 2012 due to a fungal infection known as white-nose syndrome that spread from European bats, who appear to be immune. Population drops have been as great as 90% within five years, and extinction of at least one bat species is predicted. There is currently no form of treatment, and such declines have been described as "unprecedented" in bat evolutionary history by Alan Hicks of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Between 2007 and 2013, over ten million beehives were abandoned due to colony collapse disorder, which causes worker bees to abandon the queen. Though no single cause has gained widespread acceptance by the scientific community, proposals include infections with Varroa and Acarapis mites; malnutrition; various pathogens; genetic factors; immunodeficiencies; loss of habitat; changing beekeeping practices; or a combination of factors.

By region

Megafauna were once found on every continent of the world, but are now almost exclusively found on the continent of Africa. In some regions, megafauna experienced population crashes and trophic cascades shortly after the earliest human settlers. Worldwide, 178 species of the world's largest mammals died out between 52,000 and 9,000 BC; it has been suggested that a higher proportion of African megafauna survived because they evolved alongside humans. The timing of South American megafaunal extinction appears to precede human arrival, although the possibility that human activity at the time impacted the global climate enough to cause such an extinction has been suggested.

Africa

Africa experienced the smallest decline in megafauna compared to the other continents. This is presumably due to the idea that Afroeurasian megafauna evolved alongside humans, and thus developed a healthy fear of them, unlike the comparatively tame animals of other continents.

Eurasia

Unlike other continents, the megafauna of Eurasia went extinct over a relatively long period of time, possibly due to climate fluctuations fragmenting and decreasing populations, leaving them vulnerable to over-exploitation, as with the steppe bison (Bison priscus). The warming of the arctic region caused the rapid decline of grasslands, which had a negative effect on the grazing megafauna of Eurasia. Most of what once was mammoth steppe was converted to mire, rendering the environment incapable of supporting them, notably the woolly mammoth. However, all these megafauna had survived previous interglacials with the same or more intense warming, suggesting that even during warm periods, refugia may have existed and that human hunting may have been the critical factor for their extinction.

In the western Mediterranean region, anthropogenic forest degradation began around 4,000 BP, during the Chalcolithic, and became especially pronounced during the Roman era. The reasons for the decline of forest ecosystems stem from agriculture, grazing, and mining. During the twilight years of the Western Roman Empire, forests in northwestern Europe rebounded from losses incurred throughout the Roman period, though deforestation on a large scale resumed once again around 800 BP, during the High Middle Ages.

In southern China, human land use is believed to have permanently altered the trend of vegetation dynamics in the region, which was previously governed by temperature. This is evidenced by high fluxes of charcoal from that time interval.

Americas

There has been a debate as to the extent to which the disappearance of megafauna at the end of the last glacial period can be attributed to human activities by hunting, or even by slaughter of prey populations. Discoveries at Monte Verde in South America and at Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania have caused a controversy regarding the Clovis culture. There likely would have been human settlements prior to the Clovis culture, and the history of humans in the Americas may extend back many thousands of years before the Clovis culture. The amount of correlation between human arrival and megafauna extinction is still being debated: for example, in Wrangel Island in Siberia the extinction of dwarf woolly mammoths (approximately 2000 BC) did not coincide with the arrival of humans, nor did megafaunal mass extinction on the South American continent, although it has been suggested climate changes induced by anthropogenic effects elsewhere in the world may have contributed.

Comparisons are sometimes made between recent extinctions (approximately since the Industrial Revolution) and the Pleistocene extinction near the end of the last glacial period. The latter is exemplified by the extinction of large herbivores such as the woolly mammoth and the carnivores that preyed on them. Humans of this era actively hunted the mammoth and the mastodon, but it is not known if this hunting was the cause of the subsequent massive ecological changes, widespread extinctions and climate changes.

The ecosystems encountered by the first Americans had not been exposed to human interaction, and may have been far less resilient to human made changes than the ecosystems encountered by industrial era humans. Therefore, the actions of the Clovis people, despite seeming insignificant by today's standards could indeed have had a profound effect on the ecosystems and wild life which was entirely unused to human influence.

In the Yukon, the mammoth steppe ecosystem collapsed between 13,500 and 10,000 BP, though wild horses and woolly mammoths somehow persisted in the region for millennia after this collapse. In what is now Texas, a drop in local plant and animal biodiversity occurred during the Younger Dryas cooling, though while plant diversity recovered after the Younger Dryas, animal diversity did not. In the Channel Islands, multiple terrestrial species went extinct around the same time as human arrival, but direct evidence for an anthropogenic cause of their extinction remains lacking. In the montane forests of the Colombian Andes, spores of coprophilous fungi indicate megafaunal extinction occurred in two waves, the first occurring around 22,900 BP and the second around 10,990 BP. A 2023 study of megafaunal extinctions in the Junín Plateau of Peru found that the timing of the disappearance of megafauna was concurrent with a large uptick in fire activity attributed to human actions, implicating humans as the cause of their local extinction on the plateau.

New Guinea

Humans in New Guinea used volcanically fertilised soil following major eruptions and interfered with vegetation succession patterns since the Late Pleistocene, with this process intensifying in the Holocene.

Australia

Since European colonisation Australia has lost over 100 plant and animal species, including 10% of its mammal species, the highest of any continent.

Australia was once home to a large assemblage of megafauna, with many parallels to those found on the African continent today. Australia's fauna is characterized by primarily marsupial mammals, and many reptiles and birds, all existing as giant forms until recently. Humans arrived on the continent very early, about 50,000 years ago. The extent human arrival contributed is controversial; climatic drying of Australia 40,000–60,000 years ago was an unlikely cause, as it was less severe in speed or magnitude than previous regional climate change which failed to kill off megafauna. Extinctions in Australia continued from original settlement until today in both plants and animals, while many more animals and plants have declined or are endangered.

Due to the older timeframe and the soil chemistry on the continent, very little subfossil preservation evidence exists relative to elsewhere. However, continent-wide extinction of all genera weighing over 100 kilograms, and six of seven genera weighing between 45 and 100 kilograms occurred around 46,400 years ago (4,000 years after human arrival) and the fact that megafauna survived until a later date on the island of Tasmania following the establishment of a land bridge suggest direct hunting or anthropogenic ecosystem disruption such as fire-stick farming as likely causes. The first evidence of direct human predation leading to extinction in Australia was published in 2016.

A 2021 study found that the rate of extinction of Australia's megafauna is rather unusual, with some generalistic species having gone extinct earlier while highly specialized ones having become extinct later or even still surviving today. A mosaic cause of extinction with different anthropogenic and environmental pressures has been proposed.

The arrival of invasive species such as feral cats and cane toads has further devastated Australia's ecosystems.

Caribbean

Human arrival in the Caribbean around 6,000 years ago is correlated with the extinction of many species. These include many different genera of ground and arboreal sloths across all islands. These sloths were generally smaller than those found on the South American continent. Megalocnus were the largest genus at up to 90 kilograms (200 lb), Acratocnus were medium-sized relatives of modern two-toed sloths endemic to Cuba, Imagocnus also of Cuba, Neocnus and many others.

Macaronesia

The arrival of the first human settlers in the Azores saw the introduction of invasive plants and livestock to the archipelago, resulting in the extinction of at least two plant species on Pico Island. On Faial Island, the decline of Prunus lusitanica has been hypothesized by some scholars to have been related to the tree species being endozoochoric, with the extirpation or extinction of various bird species drastically limiting its seed dispersal. Lacustrine ecosystems were ravaged by human colonization, as evidenced by hydrogen isotopes from C₃₀ fatty acids recording hypoxic bottom waters caused by eutrophication in Lake Funda on Flores Island beginning between 1500 and 1600 AD.

The arrival of humans on the archipelago of Madeira caused the extinction of approximately two-thirds of its endemic bird species, with two non-endemic birds also being locally extirpated from the archipelago. Of thirty-four land snail species collected in a subfossil sample from eastern Madeira Island, nine became extinct following the arrival of humans. On the Desertas Islands, of forty-five land snail species known to exist before human colonization, eighteen are extinct and five are no longer present on the islands. Eurya stigmosa, whose extinction is typically attributed to climate change following the end of the Pleistocene rather than humans, may have survived until the colonization of the archipelago by the Portuguese and gone extinct as a result of human activity. Introduced mice have been implicated as a leading driver of extinction on Madeira following its discovery and settlement by humans.

In the Canary Islands, native thermophilous woodlands were decimated and two tree taxa were driven extinct following the arrival of its first humans, primarily as a result of increased fire clearance and soil erosion and the introduction of invasive pigs, goats, and rats. Invasive species introductions accelerated during the Age of Discovery when Europeans first settled the Macaronesian archipelago. The archipelago's laurel forests, though still negatively impacted, fared better due to being less suitable for human economic use.

Cabo Verde, like the Canary Islands, witnessed precipitous deforestation upon the arrival of European settlers and various invasive species brought by them in the archipelago, with the archipelago's thermophilous woodlands suffering the greatest destruction. Introduced species, overgrazing, increased fire incidence, and soil degradation have been attributed as the chief causes of Cabo Verde's ecological devastation.

Pacific

Archaeological and paleontological digs on 70 different Pacific islands suggested that numerous species became extinct as people moved across the Pacific, starting 30,000 years ago in the Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Islands. It is currently estimated that among the bird species of the Pacific, some 2000 species have gone extinct since the arrival of humans, representing a 20% drop in the biodiversity of birds worldwide. In Polynesia, the Late Holocene declines in avifaunas only abated after they were heavily depleted and there were increasingly fewer bird species able to be driven to extinction. Iguanas were likewise decimated by the spread of humans. Additionally, the endemic faunas of Pacific archipelagos are exceptionally at risk in the coming decades due to rising sea levels caused by global warming.

Lord Howe Island, which remained uninhabited until the arrival of Europeans in the South Pacific in the 18th century, lost much of its endemic avifauna when it became a whaling station in the early 19th century. Another wave of bird extinctions occurred following the introduction of black rats in 1918.

The endemic megafaunal meiolaniid turtles of Vanuatu became extinct immediately following the first human arrivals and remains of them containing evidence of butchery by humans have been found.

The arrival of humans in New Caledonia marked the commencement of coastal forest and mangrove decline on the island. The archipelago's megafauna was still extant when humans arrived, but indisputable evidence for the anthropogenicity of their extinction remains elusive.

In Fiji, the giant iguanas Brachylophus gibbonsi and Lapitiguana impensa both succumbed to human-induced extinction shortly after encountering the first humans on the island.

In American Samoa, deposits dating back to the period of initial human colonisation contain elevated quantities of bird, turtle, and fish remains caused by increased predation pressure.

On Mangaia in the Cook Islands, human colonisation was associated with a major extinction of endemic avifauna, along with deforestation, erosion of volcanic hillsides, and increased charcoal influx, causing additional environmental damage.

On Rapa in the Austral Archipelago, human arrival, marked by the increase in charcoal and in taro pollen in the palynological record, is associated with the extinction of an endemic palm.

Henderson Island, once thought to be untouched by humans, was colonised and later abandoned by Polynesians. The ecological collapse on the island caused by the anthropogenic extinctions is believed to have caused the island's abandonment.

The first human settlers of the Hawaiian Islands are thought to have arrived between 300 and 800 AD, with European arrival in the 16th century. Hawaii is notable for its endemism of plants, birds, insects, mollusks and fish; 30% of its organisms are endemic. Many of its species are endangered or have gone extinct, primarily due to accidentally introduced species and livestock grazing. Over 40% of its bird species have gone extinct, and it is the location of 75% of extinctions in the United States. Evidence suggests that the introduction of the Polynesian rat, above all other factors, drove the ecocide of the endemic forests of the archipelago. Extinction has increased in Hawaii over the last 200 years and is relatively well documented, with extinctions among native snails used as estimates for global extinction rates. High rates of habitat fragmentation on the archipelago have further reduced biodiversity. The extinction of endemic Hawaiian avifauna is likely to accelerate even further as anthropogenic global warming adds additional pressure on top of land-use changes and invasive species.

Madagascar

Within centuries of the arrival of humans around the 1st millennium AD, nearly all of Madagascar's distinct, endemic, and geographically isolated megafauna became extinct. The largest animals, of more than 150 kilograms (330 lb), were extinct very shortly after the first human arrival, with large and medium-sized species dying out after prolonged hunting pressure from an expanding human population moving into more remote regions of the island around 1000 years ago. as well as 17 species of "giant" lemurs. Some of these lemurs typically weighed over 150 kilograms (330 lb), and their fossils have provided evidence of human butchery on many species. Other megafauna present on the island included the Malagasy hippopotamuses as well as the large flightless elephant birds, both groups are thought to have gone extinct in the interval 750–1050 AD. Smaller fauna experienced initial increases due to decreased competition, and then subsequent declines over the last 500 years. All fauna weighing over 10 kilograms (22 lb) died out. The primary reasons for the decline of Madagascar's biota, which at the time was already stressed by natural aridification, were human hunting, herding, farming, and forest clearing, all of which persist and threaten Madagascar's remaining taxa today. The natural ecosystems of Madagascar as a whole were further impacted by the much greater incidence of fire as a result of anthropogenic fire production; evidence from Lake Amparihibe on the island of Nosy Be indicates a shift in local vegetation from intact rainforest to a fire-disturbed patchwork of grassland and woodland between 1300 and 1000 BP.

New Zealand

New Zealand is characterized by its geographic isolation and island biogeography, and had been isolated from mainland Australia for 80 million years. It was the last large land mass to be colonized by humans. Upon the arrival of Polynesian settlers in the late 13th century, the native biota suffered a catastrophic decline due to deforestation, hunting, and the introduction of invasive species. The extinction of all of the islands' megafaunal birds occurred within several hundred years of human arrival. The moa, large flightless ratites, were thriving during the Late Holocene, but became extinct within 200 years of the arrival of human settlers, as did the enormous Haast's eagle, their primary predator, and at least two species of large, flightless geese. The Polynesians also introduced the Polynesian rat. This may have put some pressure on other birds, but at the time of early European contact (18th century) and colonization (19th century), the bird life was prolific. The megafaunal extinction happened extremely rapidly despite a very small population density, which never exceeded 0.01 people per km. Extinctions of parasites followed the extinction of New Zealand's megafauna. With them, the Europeans brought various invasive species including ship rats, possums, cats and mustelids which devastated native bird life, some of which had adapted flightlessness and ground nesting habits, and had no defensive behavior as a result of having no native mammalian predators. The kākāpō, the world's biggest parrot, which is flightless, now only exists in managed breeding sanctuaries. New Zealand's national emblem, the kiwi, is on the endangered bird list.

Mitigation

Stabilizing human populations; reining in capitalism, decreasing economic demands, and shifting them to economic activities with low impacts on biodiversity; transitioning to plant-based diets; and increasing the number and size of terrestrial and marine protected areas have been suggested to avoid or limit biodiversity loss and a possible sixth mass extinction. Rodolfo Dirzo and Paul R. Ehrlich suggest that "the one fundamental, necessary, 'simple' cure, ... is reducing the scale of the human enterprise." According to a 2021 paper published in Frontiers in Conservation Science, humanity almost certainly faces a "ghastly future" of mass extinction, biodiversity collapse, climate change, and their impacts unless major efforts to change human industry and activity are rapidly undertaken.

Reducing human population growth has been suggested as a means of mitigating climate change and the biodiversity crisis, although many scholars believe it has been largely ignored in mainstream policy discourse. An alternative proposal is greater agricultural efficiency & sustainability. Lots of non-arable land can be made into arable land good for growing food crops. Mushrooms have also been known to repair damaged soil.

A 2018 article in Science advocated for the global community to designate 30% of the planet by 2030, and 50% by 2050, as protected areas to mitigate the contemporary extinction crisis. It highlighted that the human population is projected to grow to 10 billion by the middle of the century, and consumption of food and water resources is projected to double by this time. A 2022 report published in Science warned that 44% of Earth's terrestrial surface, or 64 million square kilometres (24.7 million square miles), must be conserved and made "ecologically sound" to prevent further biodiversity loss.

In November 2018, the UN's biodiversity chief Cristiana Pașca Palmer urged people worldwide to pressure governments to implement significant protections for wildlife by 2020. She called biodiversity loss a "silent killer" as dangerous as global warming but said it had received little attention by comparison. "It's different from climate change, where people feel the impact in everyday life. With biodiversity, it is not so clear but by the time you feel what is happening, it may be too late." In January 2020, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity drafted a Paris-style plan to stop biodiversity and ecosystem collapse by setting the deadline of 2030 to protect 30% of the Earth's land and oceans and to reduce pollution by 50%, to allow for the restoration of ecosystems by 2050. The world failed to meet the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for 2020 set by the convention during a summit in Japan in 2010. Of the 20 biodiversity targets proposed, only six were "partially achieved" by the deadline. It was called a global failure by Inger Andersen, head of the United Nations Environment Programme:

"From COVID-19 to massive wildfires, floods, melting glaciers and unprecedented heat, our failure to meet the Aichi (biodiversity) targets — to protect our home — has very real consequences. We can no longer afford to cast nature to the side."

Some scientists have proposed keeping extinctions below 20 per year for the next century as a global target to reduce species loss, which is the biodiversity equivalent of the 2 °C climate target, although it is still much higher than the normal background rate of two per year prior to anthropogenic impacts on the natural world.

An October 2020 report on the "era of pandemics" from IPBES found that many of the same human activities that contribute to biodiversity loss and climate change, including deforestation and the wildlife trade, have also increased the risk of future pandemics. The report offers several policy options to reduce such risk, such as taxing meat production and consumption, cracking down on the illegal wildlife trade, removing high disease-risk species from the legal wildlife trade, and eliminating subsidies to businesses which are harmful to the environment. According to marine zoologist John Spicer, "the COVID-19 crisis is not just another crisis alongside the biodiversity crisis and the climate change crisis. Make no mistake, this is one big crisis – the greatest that humans have ever faced."

In December 2022, nearly every country on Earth, with the United States and the Holy See being the only exceptions, signed onto the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreement formulated at the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) which includes protecting 30% of land and oceans by 2030 and 22 other targets intended to mitigate the extinction crisis. The agreement is weaker than the Aichi Targets of 2010. It was criticized by some countries for being rushed and not going far enough to protect endangered species.

See also

• Anthropocene
• Biodiversity loss
• Ecocide
• Extinction Rebellion
• Extinction risk from climate change
• Extinction symbol
• Extinction: The Facts (2020 documentary)
• Human impact on the environment
• Lists of extinct species
• Pleistocene rewilding
• Late Pleistocene extinctions
• Racing Extinction (2015 documentary film)
• Timeline of extinctions in the Holocene
• World Scientists' Warning to Humanity

Notes

1. Phylogenetic diversity (PD) is the sum of the phylogenetic branch lengths in years connecting a set of species to each other across their phylogenetic tree, and measures their collective contribution to the tree of life.
2. This may refer to groups of animals endangered by climate change. For example, during a catastrophic drought, remaining animals would be gathered around the few remaining watering holes, and thus become extremely vulnerable.

References

1. Hume, J. P.; Walters, M. (2012). Extinct Birds. London: A & C Black. ISBN 978-1-4081-5725-1.
2. Diamond, Jared (1999). "Up to the Starting Line". Guns, Germs, and Steel. W.W. Norton. pp. 43–44. ISBN 978-0-393-31755-8.
3. Wagler, Ron (2011). "The Anthropocene Mass Extinction: An Emerging Curriculum Theme for Science Educators". The American Biology Teacher. 73 (2): 78–83. doi:10.1525/abt.2011.73.2.5. S2CID 86352610. Archived from the original on 2022-02-05.
4. Walsh, Alistair (January 11, 2022). "What to expect from the world's sixth mass extinction". Deutsche Welle. Archived from the original on October 8, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2022.
5. Hollingsworth, Julia (June 11, 2019). "Almost 600 plant species have become extinct in the last 250 years". CNN. Archived from the original on April 20, 2021. Retrieved January 14, 2020. The research – published Monday in Nature, Ecology & Evolution journal – found that 571 plant species have disappeared from the wild worldwide, and that plant extinction is occurring up to 500 times faster than the rate it would without human intervention.
6. Guy, Jack (September 30, 2020). "Around 40% of the world's plant species are threatened with extinction". CNN. Retrieved September 1, 2021.
7. Watts, Jonathan (August 31, 2021). "Up to half of world's wild tree species could be at risk of extinction". The Guardian. Retrieved September 1, 2021.
8. Marine Extinctions: Patterns and Processes – an overview. 2013. CIESM Monograph 45
9. Ceballos, Gerardo; Ehrlich, Paul R. (8 June 2018). "The misunderstood sixth mass extinction". Science. 360 (6393): 1080–1081. Bibcode:2018Sci...360.1080C. doi:10.1126/science.aau0191. OCLC 7673137938. PMID 29880679. S2CID 46984172.
10. ^ Pimm SL, Jenkins CN, Abell R, Brooks TM, Gittleman JL, Joppa LN, Raven PH, Roberts CM, Sexton JO (30 May 2014). "The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection" (PDF). Science. 344 (6187): 1246752-1–1246752-10. doi:10.1126/science.1246752. PMID 24876501. S2CID 206552746. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 July 2019. Retrieved 15 December 2016. The overarching driver of species extinction is human population growth and increasing per capita consumption.
11. ^ Pimm, Stuart L.; Russell, Gareth J.; Gittleman, John L.; Brooks, Thomas M. (1995). "The Future of Biodiversity". Science. 269 (5222): 347–350. Bibcode:1995Sci...269..347P. doi:10.1126/science.269.5222.347. PMID 17841251. S2CID 35154695.
12. ^ Teyssèdre, Anne (2004). Toward a sixth mass extinction crisis? Chapter 2 in Biodiversity & global change : social issues and scientific challenges. R. Barbault, Bernard Chevassus-au-Louis, Anne Teyssèdre, Association pour la diffusion de la pensée française. Paris: Adpf. pp. 24–49. ISBN 2-914935-28-5. OCLC 57892208.
13. ^ De Vos, Jurriaan M.; Joppa, Lucas N.; Gittleman, John L.; Stephens, Patrick R.; Pimm, Stuart L. (2014-08-26). "Estimating the normal background rate of species extinction" (PDF). Conservation Biology (in Spanish). 29 (2): 452–462. Bibcode:2015ConBi..29..452D. doi:10.1111/cobi.12380. ISSN 0888-8892. PMID 25159086. S2CID 19121609. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-11-04. Retrieved 2019-11-24.
14. ^ Ceballos, Gerardo; Ehrlich, Paul R.; Barnosky, Anthony D.; García, Andrés; Pringle, Robert M.; Palmer, Todd M. (19 June 2015). "Accelerated modern human-induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction". Science Advances. 1 (5): e1400253. Bibcode:2015SciA....1E0253C. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1400253. PMC 4640606. PMID 26601195. All of these are related to human population size and growth, which increases consumption (especially among the rich), and economic inequity.
15. World Wildlife Fund (September 10, 2020). "Bending the curve of biodiversity loss". Living Planet Report 2020. Archived from the original on October 31, 2022.
16. Raven, Peter H.; Chase, Jonathan M.; Pires, J. Chris (2011). "Introduction to special issue on biodiversity". American Journal of Botany. 98 (3): 333–335. doi:10.3732/ajb.1100055. PMID 21613129.
17. Rosenberg KV, Dokter AM, Blancher PJ, Sauer JR, Smith AC, Smith PA, Stanton JC, Panjabi A, Helft L, Parr M, Marra PP (2019). "Decline of the North American avifauna". Science. 366 (6461): 120–124. Bibcode:2019Sci...366..120R. doi:10.1126/science.aaw1313. PMID 31604313. S2CID 203719982.
18. ^ Barnosky, Anthony D.; Matzke, Nicholas; Tomiya, Susumu; Wogan, Guinevere O. U.; Swartz, Brian; Quental, Tiago B.; Marshall, Charles; McGuire, Jenny L.; Lindsey, Emily L.; Maguire, Kaitlin C.; Mersey, Ben; Ferrer, Elizabeth A. (3 March 2011). "Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?". Nature. 471 (7336): 51–57. Bibcode:2011Natur.471...51B. doi:10.1038/nature09678. PMID 21368823. S2CID 4424650.
19. Briggs, John C (October 2017). "Emergence of a sixth mass extinction?". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 122 (2): 243–248. doi:10.1093/biolinnean/blx063. ISSN 0024-4066. Archived from the original on 2022-06-18. Retrieved 2022-12-03.
20. ^ Cowie, Robert H.; Bouchet, Philippe; Fontaine, Benoît (2022). "The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculation?". Biological Reviews. 97 (2): 640–663. doi:10.1111/brv.12816. PMC 9786292. PMID 35014169. S2CID 245889833. Our review lays out arguments clearly demonstrating that there is a biodiversity crisis, quite probably the start of the Sixth Mass Extinction.
21. ^ Strona, Giovanni; Bradshaw, Corey J. A. (2022). "Coextinctions dominate future vertebrate losses from climate and land use change". Science Advances. 8 (50): eabn4345. Bibcode:2022SciA....8N4345S. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abn4345. PMC 9757742. PMID 36525487. The planet has entered the sixth mass extinction.
22. ^ Rampino, Michael R.; Shen, Shu-Zhong (5 September 2019). "The end-Guadalupian (259.8 Ma) biodiversity crisis: the sixth major mass extinction?". Historical Biology. 33 (5): 716–722. doi:10.1080/08912963.2019.1658096. S2CID 202858078. Archived from the original on 13 July 2020. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
23. ^ "Seventh Mass Extinction? Severe and Deadly Event 260 Million Years Ago Discovered by Scientists". Newsweek. 9 October 2019. Archived from the original on 17 April 2023. Retrieved 17 April 2023.
24. ^ Faurby, Søren; Svenning, Jens-Christian (2015). "Historic and prehistoric human-driven extinctions have reshaped global mammal diversity patterns". Diversity and Distributions. 21 (10): 1155–1166. Bibcode:2015DivDi..21.1155F. doi:10.1111/ddi.12369. hdl:10261/123512. S2CID 196689979.
25. Svenning, Jens-Christian; Lemoine, Rhys T.; Bergman, Juraj; Buitenwerf, Robert; Le Roux, Elizabeth; Lundgren, Erick; Mungi, Ninad; Pedersen, Rasmus Ø. (2024). "The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes, ecological consequences and implications for ecosystem management in the Anthropocene". Cambridge Prisms: Extinction. 2. doi:10.1017/ext.2024.4. ISSN 2755-0958.
26. Cooke, Rob; Sayol, Ferran; Andermann, Tobias; Blackburn, Tim M.; Steinbauer, Manuel J.; Antonelli, Alexandre; Faurby, Søren (2023-12-19). "Undiscovered bird extinctions obscure the true magnitude of human-driven extinction waves". Nature Communications. 14 (1): 8116. Bibcode:2023NatCo..14.8116C. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-43445-2. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 10730700. PMID 38114469.
27. Gemma, Conroy (December 19, 2023). "Humans might have driven 1,500 bird species to extinction — twice previous estimates". Nature. Archived from the original on January 16, 2024. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
28. McNeill, John Robert; Engelke, Peter (2016). The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (1st ed.). Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674545038.
29. Daly, Herman E.; Farley, Joshua C. (2010). Ecological economics, second edition: Principles and applications. Island Press. ISBN 9781597266819.
30. IPBES (2019). "Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)" (PDF). Bonn, Germany: IPBES Secretariat. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-05-06. Retrieved 2022-10-29.
31. ^ Crist E, Kopnina H, Cafaro P, Gray J, Ripple WJ, Safina C, Davis J, DellaSala DA, Noss RF, Washington H, Rolston III H, Taylor B, Orlikowska EH, Heister A, Lynn WS, Piccolo JJ (18 November 2021). "Protecting half the planet and transforming human systems are complementary goals". Frontiers in Conservation Science. 2. 761292. doi:10.3389/fcosc.2021.761292.
32. ^ Darimont, Chris T.; Fox, Caroline H.; Bryan, Heather M.; Reimchen, Thomas E. (21 August 2015). "The unique ecology of human predators". Science. 349 (6250): 858–860. Bibcode:2015Sci...349..858D. doi:10.1126/science.aac4249. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 26293961. S2CID 4985359.
33. ^ Cafaro, Philip; Hansson, Pernilla; Götmark, Frank (August 2022). "Overpopulation is a major cause of biodiversity loss and smaller human populations are necessary to preserve what is left" (PDF). Biological Conservation. 272. 109646. Bibcode:2022BCons.27209646C. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109646. ISSN 0006-3207. S2CID 250185617. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-12-08. Retrieved 2022-12-16.
34. Fricke, Evan C.; Hsieh, Chia; Middleton, Owen; Gorczynski, Daniel; Cappello, Caroline D.; Sanisidro, Oscar; Rowan, John; Svenning, Jens-Christian; Beaudrot, Lydia (August 25, 2022). "Collapse of terrestrial mammal food webs since the Late Pleistocene". Science. 377 (6609): 1008–1011. Bibcode:2022Sci...377.1008F. doi:10.1126/science.abn4012. PMID 36007038. S2CID 251843290. Food webs underwent steep regional declines in complexity through loss of food web links after the arrival and expansion of human populations. We estimate that defaunation has caused a 53% decline in food web links globally.
35. Dasgupta, Partha S.; Ehrlich, Paul R. (19 April 2013). "Pervasive Externalities at the Population, Consumption, and Environment Nexus". Science. 340 (6130): 324–328. Bibcode:2013Sci...340..324D. doi:10.1126/science.1224664. PMID 23599486. S2CID 9503728. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
36. Cincotta, Richard P.; Engelman, Robert (Spring 2000). "Biodiversity and population growth". Issues in Science and Technology. 16 (3): 80. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
37. Maurer, Brian A. (January 1996). "Relating Human Population Growth to the Loss of Biodiversity". Biodiversity Letters. 3 (1): 1–5. doi:10.2307/2999702. JSTOR 2999702. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
38. Cockburn, Harry (March 29, 2019). "Population explosion fuelling rapid reduction of wildlife on African savannah, study shows". The Independent. Archived from the original on May 22, 2019. Retrieved April 1, 2019. Encroachment by people into one of Africa's most celebrated ecosystems is "squeezing the wildlife in its core", by damaging habitation and disrupting the migration routes of animals, a major international study has concluded.
39. ^ Stokstad, Erik (5 May 2019). "Landmark analysis documents the alarming global decline of nature". Science. AAAS. Archived from the original on 26 October 2021. Retrieved 26 August 2020. For the first time at a global scale, the report has ranked the causes of damage. Topping the list, changes in land use—principally agriculture—that have destroyed habitat. Second, hunting and other kinds of exploitation. These are followed by climate change, pollution, and invasive species, which are being spread by trade and other activities. Climate change will likely overtake the other threats in the next decades, the authors note. Driving these threats are the growing human population, which has doubled since 1970 to 7.6 billion, and consumption. (Per capita of use of materials is up 15% over the past 5 decades.)
40. ^ Ceballos, Gerardo; Ehrlich, Paul R.; Dirzo, Rodolfo (23 May 2017). "Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines". PNAS. 114 (30): E6089–E6096. Bibcode:2017PNAS..114E6089C. doi:10.1073/pnas.1704949114. PMC 5544311. PMID 28696295. Much less frequently mentioned are, however, the ultimate drivers of those immediate causes of biotic destruction, namely, human overpopulation and continued population growth, and overconsumption, especially by the rich. These drivers, all of which trace to the fiction that perpetual growth can occur on a finite planet, are themselves increasing rapidly
41. ^ Wiedmann, Thomas; Lenzen, Manfred; Keyßer, Lorenz T.; Steinberger, Julia K. (2020). "Scientists' warning on affluence". Nature Communications. 11 (3107): 3107. Bibcode:2020NatCo..11.3107W. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-16941-y. PMC 7305220. PMID 32561753. The affluent citizens of the world are responsible for most environmental impacts and are central to any future prospect of retreating to safer environmental conditions . . . It is clear that prevailing capitalist, growth-driven economic systems have not only increased affluence since World War II, but have led to enormous increases in inequality, financial instability, resource consumption and environmental pressures on vital earth support systems.
42. Greenfield, Patrick (March 2, 2023). "Overconsumption by the rich must be tackled, says acting UN biodiversity chief". The Guardian. Retrieved March 2, 2023.
43. ^ Ripple WJ, Wolf C, Newsome TM, Galetti M, Alamgir M, Crist E, Mahmoud MI, Laurance WF (13 November 2017). "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice" (PDF). BioScience. 67 (12): 1026–1028. doi:10.1093/biosci/bix125. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 December 2019. Retrieved 12 July 2018. Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.
44. ^ McGrath, Matt (6 May 2019). "Humans 'threaten 1m species with extinction'". BBC. Archived from the original on 30 June 2019. Retrieved 3 August 2021. Pushing all this forward, though, are increased demands for food from a growing global population and specifically our growing appetite for meat and fish.
45. ^ Carrington, Damian (February 3, 2021). "Plant-based diets crucial to saving global wildlife, says report". The Guardian. Archived from the original on December 18, 2021. Retrieved August 5, 2021.
46. ^ Machovina, B.; Feeley, K. J.; Ripple, W. J. (2015). "Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption". Science of the Total Environment. 536: 419–431. Bibcode:2015ScTEn.536..419M. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.07.022. PMID 26231772.
47. ^ Smithers, Rebecca (5 October 2017). "Vast animal-feed crops to satisfy our meat needs are destroying planet". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 3 March 2018. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
48. Boscardin, Livia (12 July 2016). "Greenwashing the Animal-Industrial Complex: Sustainable Intensification and Happy Meat". 3rd ISA Forum of Sociology, Vienna, Austria. ISAConf.confex.com. Archived from the original on 10 August 2021. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
49. Elbein, Saul (December 11, 2021). "Wetlands point to extinction problems beyond climate change". The Hill. Archived from the original on December 11, 2021. Retrieved December 12, 2021.
50. ^ Wake, David B.; Vredenburg, Vance T. (2008-08-12). "Are we in the midst of the sixth mass extinction? A view from the world of amphibians". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105 (Suppl 1): 11466–11473. Bibcode:2008PNAS..10511466W. doi:10.1073/pnas.0801921105. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2556420. PMID 18695221. The possibility that a sixth mass extinction spasm is upon us has received much attention. Substantial evidence suggests that an extinction event is underway.
51. Wilson, Edward O. (2003). The Future of life (1st Vintage Books ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 9780679768111.
52. ^ Dirzo, Rodolfo; Young, Hillary S.; Galetti, Mauro; Ceballos, Gerardo; Isaac, Nick J. B.; Collen, Ben (2014). "Defaunation in the Anthropocene" (PDF). Science. 345 (6195): 401–406. Bibcode:2014Sci...345..401D. doi:10.1126/science.1251817. PMID 25061202. S2CID 206555761. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-05-11. Retrieved 2016-12-16. In the past 500 years, humans have triggered a wave of extinction, threat, and local population declines that may be comparable in both rate and magnitude with the five previous mass extinctions of Earth's history
53. ^ Kolbert, Elizabeth (2014). The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. New York City: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0805092998.
54. ^ Williams, Mark; Zalasiewicz, Jan; Haff, P. K.; Schwägerl, Christian; Barnosky, Anthony D.; Ellis, Erle C. (2015). "The Anthropocene Biosphere". The Anthropocene Review. 2 (3): 196–219. Bibcode:2015AntRv...2..196W. doi:10.1177/2053019615591020. S2CID 7771527.
55. ^ Doughty, C. E.; Wolf, A.; Field, C. B. (2010). "Biophysical feedbacks between the Pleistocene megafauna extinction and climate: The first human-induced global warming?". Geophysical Research Letters. 37 (15): n/a. Bibcode:2010GeoRL..3715703D. doi:10.1029/2010GL043985. S2CID 54849882.
56. ^ Grayson, Donald K.; Meltzer, David J. (December 2012). "Clovis Hunting and Large Mammal Extinction: A Critical Review of the Evidence". Journal of World Prehistory. 16 (4): 313–359. doi:10.1023/A:1022912030020. S2CID 162794300.
57. ^ Vignieri, S. (25 July 2014). "Vanishing fauna (Special issue)". Science. 345 (6195): 392–412. Bibcode:2014Sci...345..392V. doi:10.1126/science.345.6195.392. PMID 25061199.
58. "National Survey Reveals Biodiversity Crisis – Scientific Experts Believe We are in Midst of Fastest Mass Extinction in Earth's History". American Museum of Natural History Press Release. 1998. Archived from the original on 29 June 2019. Retrieved 10 February 2018.
59. Faith, J. Tyler; Rowan, John; Du, Andrew; Barr, W. Andrew (July 2020). "The uncertain case for human-driven extinctions prior to Homo sapiens". Quaternary Research. 96: 88–104. Bibcode:2020QuRes..96...88F. doi:10.1017/qua.2020.51. ISSN 0033-5894.
60. ^ Perry, George L. W.; Wheeler, Andrew B.; Wood, Jamie R.; Wilmshurst, Janet M. (2014-12-01). "A high-precision chronology for the rapid extinction of New Zealand moa (Aves, Dinornithiformes)". Quaternary Science Reviews. 105: 126–135. Bibcode:2014QSRv..105..126P. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.09.025.
61. ^ Crowley, Brooke E. (2010-09-01). "A refined chronology of prehistoric Madagascar and the demise of the megafauna". Quaternary Science Reviews. Special Theme: Case Studies of Neodymium Isotopes in Paleoceanography. 29 (19–20): 2591–2603. Bibcode:2010QSRv...29.2591C. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.06.030.
62. Li, Sophia (2012-09-20). "Has Plant Life Reached Its Limits?". Green Blog. Archived from the original on 2018-06-20. Retrieved 2016-01-22.
63. ^ Lawton, J. H.; May, R. M. (1995). "Extinction Rates". Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 9: 124–126. doi:10.1046/j.1420-9101.1996.t01-1-9010124.x.
64. Lawton, J. H.; May, R. M. (1995). "Extinction Rates". Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 9 (1): 124–126. doi:10.1046/j.1420-9101.1996.t01-1-9010124.x.
65. Li, S. (2012). "Has Plant Life Reached Its Limits?". New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 October 2019. Retrieved 10 February 2018.
66. Woodward, Aylin (April 8, 2019). "So many animals are going extinct that it could take Earth 10 million years to recover". Business Insider. Archived from the original on October 8, 2019. Retrieved April 9, 2019. Lowery doesn't think we've strayed into Sixth Extinction territory yet. But he and Fraass agree that squabbling over what constitutes that distinction is beside the point. "We have to work to save biodiversity before it's gone. That's the important takeaway here," Lowery said. There is consensus on one aspect of the extinction trend, however: Homo sapiens are to blame. According to a 2014 study, current extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than they would be if humans weren't around.
67. Brannen, Peter (13 June 2017). "Earth Is Not in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 9 December 2020. Retrieved 28 November 2020. Many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don't have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, much less how truly awful the mass extinctions recorded in the marine fossil record actually were.
68. Hull, Pincelli M.; Darroch, Simon A. F.; Erwin, Douglas H. (17 December 2015). "Rarity in mass extinctions and the future of ecosystems". Nature. 528 (7582): 345–351. Bibcode:2015Natur.528..345H. doi:10.1038/nature16160. PMID 26672552. S2CID 4464936.
69. Briggs, John C. (12 May 2017). "Emergence of a sixth mass extinction?". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 122 (2): 243–248. doi:10.1093/biolinnean/blx063. Archived from the original on 22 August 2021. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
70. ^ "Research shows catastrophic invertebrate extinction in Hawai'i and globally". Phys.org. 2015. Archived from the original on 30 December 2019. Retrieved 10 February 2018.
71. Régnier, Claire; Achaz, Guillaume; Lambert, Amaury; Cowie, Robert H.; Bouchet, Philippe; Fontaine, Benoît (23 June 2015). "Mass extinction in poorly known taxa". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (25): 7761–7766. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.7761R. doi:10.1073/pnas.1502350112. PMC 4485135. PMID 26056308.
72. Carrington, Damian (April 15, 2021). "Just 3% of world's ecosystems remain intact, study suggests". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 24, 2021. Retrieved April 16, 2021.
73. Plumptre, Andrew J.; Baisero, Daniele; et al. (2021). "Where Might We Find Ecologically Intact Communities?". Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. 4. Bibcode:2021FrFGC...4.6635P. doi:10.3389/ffgc.2021.626635. hdl:10261/242175.
74. Newcomb, Tim (January 18, 2023). "Supercomputer Says 27% of Life on Earth Will Be Dead by the End of This Century". Popular Mechanics. Archived from the original on January 18, 2023. Retrieved January 19, 2023.
75. Murali, Gopal; Iwamura, Takuya Iwamura; Meiri, Shai; Roll, Uri (January 18, 2023). "Future temperature extremes threaten land vertebrates". Nature. 615 (7952): 461–467. Bibcode:2023Natur.615..461M. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05606-z. PMID 36653454. S2CID 255974196. Archived from the original on May 12, 2023. Retrieved June 21, 2023.
76. Plumer, Brad (May 6, 2019). "Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an 'Unprecedented' Pace". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2022-01-03. Retrieved May 6, 2019. "Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before," the report concludes, estimating that "around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken."
77. "Media Release: Nature's Dangerous Decline 'Unprecedented'; Species Extinction Rates 'Accelerating'". Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Press release). May 6, 2019. Archived from the original on June 21, 2023. Retrieved May 6, 2019.
78. "World is 'on notice' as major UN report shows one million species face extinction". UN News. May 6, 2019. Archived from the original on March 2, 2020. Retrieved January 8, 2020.
79. ^ Watts, Jonathan (May 6, 2019). "Human society under urgent threat from loss of Earth's natural life". The Guardian. Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved May 16, 2019.
80. Dasgupta, Partha (2021). "The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review Headline Messages" (PDF). UK government. p. 1. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 20, 2022. Retrieved December 15, 2021. Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history. Current extinction rates, for example, are around 100 to 1,000 times higher than the baseline rate, and they are increasing.
81. Carrington, Damian (February 2, 2021). "Economics of biodiversity review: what are the recommendations?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
82. Melillo, Gianna (July 19, 2022). "Threat of global extinction may be greater than previously thought, study finds". The Hill. Archived from the original on July 19, 2022. Retrieved July 20, 2022.
83. Isbell, Forest; Balvanera, Patricia; et al. (2022). "Expert perspectives on global biodiversity loss and its drivers and impacts on people". Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 21 (2): 94–103. doi:10.1002/fee.2536. hdl:10852/101242. S2CID 250659953.
84. Briggs, Helen (July 8, 2022). "Unsustainable logging, fishing and hunting 'driving extinction'". BBC. Archived from the original on August 1, 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
85. Weston, Phoebe (November 8, 2023). "Number of species at risk of extinction doubles to 2 million, says study". The Guardian. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
86. Rozsa, Matthew (September 19, 2023). "Experts warn of a "biological holocaust" as human-caused extinction "mutilates" the tree of life". Salon.com. Archived from the original on September 19, 2023. Retrieved September 19, 2023.
87. Ceballos, Gerardo; Ehrlich, Paul R. (2023). "Mutilation of the tree of life via mass extinction of animal genera". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 120 (39): e2306987120. Bibcode:2023PNAS..12006987C. doi:10.1073/pnas.2306987120. PMC 10523489. PMID 37722053.
88. Greenfield, Patrick (September 19, 2023). "'Mutilating the tree of life': Wildlife loss accelerating, scientists warn". The Guardian. Archived from the original on September 25, 2023. Retrieved September 19, 2023.
89. Hickel, Jason (2021). Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. Windmill Books. p. 9. ISBN 978-1786091215.
90. ^ Andermann, Tobias; Faurby, Søren; Turvey, Samuel T.; Antonelli, Alexandre; Silvestro, Daniele (September 2020). "The past and future human impact on mammalian diversity". Science Advances. 6 (36). eabb2313. Bibcode:2020SciA....6.2313A. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abb2313. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 7473673. PMID 32917612. Text and images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Archived 2017-10-16 at the Wayback Machine.
91. Carrington, Damian (10 July 2017). "Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 January 2020. Retrieved November 4, 2017.
92. ^ Ceballos, Gerardo; Ehrlich, Paul R.; Raven, Peter H. (June 1, 2020). "Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction". PNAS. 117 (24): 13596–13602. Bibcode:2020PNAS..11713596C. doi:10.1073/pnas.1922686117. PMC 7306750. PMID 32482862.
93. Greenfield, Patrick (September 9, 2020). "Humans exploiting and destroying nature on unprecedented scale – report". The Guardian. Archived from the original on October 21, 2021. Retrieved September 10, 2020.
94. Briggs, Helen (September 10, 2020). "Wildlife in 'catastrophic decline' due to human destruction, scientists warn". BBC. Archived from the original on January 10, 2021. Retrieved September 10, 2020.
95. ^ Lewis, Sophie (September 9, 2020). "Animal populations worldwide have declined by almost 70% in just 50 years, new report says". CBS News. Archived from the original on September 10, 2020. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
96. Leung, Brian; Hargreaves, Anna L.; Greenberg, Dan A.; McGill, Brian; Dornelas, Maria; Freeman, Robin (December 2020). "Clustered versus catastrophic global vertebrate declines" (PDF). Nature. 588 (7837): 267–271. Bibcode:2020Natur.588..267L. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2920-6. hdl:10023/23213. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 33208939. S2CID 227065128. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-12-03. Retrieved 2024-04-26.
97. ^ Bradshaw, Corey J. A.; Ehrlich, Paul R.; Beattie, Andrew; Ceballos, Gerardo; Crist, Eileen; Diamond, Joan; Dirzo, Rodolfo; Ehrlich, Anne H.; Harte, John; Harte, Mary Ellen; Pyke, Graham; Raven, Peter H.; Ripple, William J.; Saltré, Frédérik; Turnbull, Christine; Wackernagel, Mathis; Blumstein, Daniel T. (2021). "Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future". Frontiers in Conservation Science. 1. doi:10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419.
98. Sankaran, Vishwam (January 17, 2022). "Study confirms sixth mass extinction is currently underway, caused by humans". The Independent. Archived from the original on January 17, 2022. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
99. Strona, Giovanni; Bradshaw, Corey J. A. (16 December 2022). "Coextinctions dominate future vertebrate losses from climate and land use change". Science Advances. 8 (50): eabn4345. Bibcode:2022SciA....8N4345S. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abn4345. PMC 9757742. PMID 36525487. S2CID 254803380.
100. Greenfield, Patrick (16 December 2022). "More than 1 in 10 species could be lost by end of century, study warns". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
101. Pimm, Stuart; Raven, Peter; Peterson, Alan; Şekercioğlu, Çağan H.; Ehrlich, Paul R. (18 July 2006). "Human impacts on the rates of recent, present, and future bird extinctions". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 103 (29): 10941–10946. doi:10.1073/pnas.0604181103. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 1544153. PMID 16829570.
102. "Biodiversity: Almost half of animals in decline, research shows". BBC. May 23, 2023. Archived from the original on July 17, 2023. Retrieved May 23, 2023.
103. Finn, Catherine; Grattarola, Florencia; Pincheira-Donoso, Daniel (2023). "More losers than winners: investigating Anthropocene defaunation through the diversity of population trends". Biological Reviews. 98 (5): 1732–1748. doi:10.1111/brv.12974. PMID 37189305. S2CID 258717720.
104. Paddison, Laura (May 22, 2023). "Global loss of wildlife is 'significantly more alarming' than previously thought, according to a new study". CNN. Archived from the original on May 25, 2023. Retrieved May 23, 2023.
105. "The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene" (PDF). UNDP. December 15, 2020. p. 3. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 16, 2020. Retrieved December 16, 2020.
106. Greenfield, Patrick (October 12, 2022). "Animal populations experience average decline of almost 70% since 1970, report reveals". The Guardian. Retrieved October 15, 2022.
107. Einhorn, Catrin (October 12, 2022). "Researchers Report a Staggering Decline in Wildlife. Here's How to Understand It". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 14, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2022.
108. ^ Dirzo, Rodolfo; Ceballos, Gerardo; Ehrlich, Paul R. (2022). "Circling the drain: the extinction crisis and the future of humanity". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 377 (1857). doi:10.1098/rstb.2021.0378. PMC 9237743. PMID 35757873.
109. Wooldridge, S. A. (9 June 2008). "Mass extinctions past and present: a unifying hypothesis" (PDF). Biogeosciences Discussions. 5 (3): 2401–2423. Bibcode:2008BGD.....5.2401W. doi:10.5194/bgd-5-2401-2008. S2CID 2346412. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 September 2019. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
110. Jackson, J. B. C. (Aug 2008). "Colloquium paper: ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 105 (Suppl 1): 11458–11465. Bibcode:2008PNAS..10511458J. doi:10.1073/pnas.0802812105. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2556419. PMID 18695220.
111. Crutzen, Paul J.; Stoermer, Eugene F. (May 2000). "The 'Anthropocene'" (PDF). Global Change NewsLetter (41). IGBP: 17. ISSN 0284-5865. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-04-18. Retrieved 2021-11-23.
112. National Geographic Society (June 7, 2019). "Anthropocene". National Geographic. Archived from the original on 31 May 2022. Retrieved 23 November 2021. coined and made popular by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000.
113. ^ Zalasiewicz, Jan; Williams, Mark; Smith, Alan; Barry, Tiffany L.; Coe, Angela L.; Bown, Paul R.; Brenchley, Patrick; Cantrill, David; Gale, Andrew; Gibbard, Philip; Gregory, F. John; Hounslow, Mark W.; Kerr, Andrew C.; Pearson, Paul; Knox, Robert; Powell, John; Waters, Colin; Marshall, John; Oates, Michael; Rawson, Peter; Stone, Philip (2008). "Are we now living in the Anthropocene". GSA Today. 18 (2): 4. Bibcode:2008GSAT...18b...4Z. doi:10.1130/GSAT01802A.1.
114. Elewa, Ashraf M. T. (2008). "Current mass extinction". Mass Extinction. pp. 191–194. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-75916-4_14. ISBN 978-3-540-75915-7.
115. ^ Ruddiman, W. F. (2003). "The anthropogenic greenhouse gas era began thousands of years ago" (PDF). Climatic Change. 61 (3): 261–293. Bibcode:2003ClCh...61..261R. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.651.2119. doi:10.1023/b:clim.0000004577.17928.fa. S2CID 2501894. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-09-03.
116. Syvitski, Jaia; Waters, Colin N.; Day, John; Milliman, John D.; Summerhayes, Colin; Steffen, Will; Zalasiewicz, Jan; Cearreta, Alejandro; Gałuszka, Agnieszka; Hajdas, Irka; Head, Martin J.; Leinfelder, Reinhold; McNeill, J. R.; Poirier, Clément; Rose, Neil L.; Shotyk, William; Wagreich, Michael; Williams, Mark (2020). "Extraordinary human energy consumption and resultant geological impacts beginning around 1950 CE initiated the proposed Anthropocene Epoch". Communications Earth & Environment. 1 (1). 32. Bibcode:2020ComEE...1...32S. doi:10.1038/s43247-020-00029-y. hdl:20.500.11850/462514. S2CID 222415797.
117. Waters, Colin N.; Zalasiewicz, Jan; Summerhayes, Colin; Barnosky, Anthony D.; Poirier, Clément; Gałuszka, Agnieszka; Cearreta, Alejandro; Edgeworth, Matt; Ellis, Erle C. (2016-01-08). "The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene". Science. 351 (6269). aad2622. Bibcode:2016Sci...351.2622W. doi:10.1126/science.aad2622. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 26744408. S2CID 206642594.
118. "Working Group on the 'Anthropocene'". Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy. Archived from the original on 17 February 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
119. Carrington, Damian (August 29, 2016). "The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age". The Guardian. Archived from the original on June 11, 2020. Retrieved August 30, 2016.
120. "The Anthropocene": IUGS-ICS Statement. March 20, 2024.
121. ^ Cruzten, P. J. (2002). "Geology of mankind: The Anthropocene". Nature. 415 (6867): 23. Bibcode:2002Natur.415...23C. doi:10.1038/415023a. PMID 11780095. S2CID 9743349.
122. Steffen, Will; Persson, Åsa; Deutsch, Lisa; Zalasiewicz, Jan; Williams, Mark; Richardson, Katherine; Crumley, Carole; Crutzen, Paul; Folke, Carl; Gordon, Line; Molina, Mario; Ramanathan, Veerabhadran; Rockström, Johan; Scheffer, Marten; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim; Svedin, Uno (2011). "The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship". Ambio. 40 (7): 739–761. Bibcode:2011Ambio..40..739S. doi:10.1007/s13280-011-0185-x. PMC 3357752. PMID 22338713.
123. ^ Carrington, Damian (May 21, 2018). "Humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals – study". The Guardian. Archived from the original on September 11, 2018. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
124. ^ Bar-On, Yinon M.; Phillips, Rob; Milo, Ron (2018). "The biomass distribution on Earth". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (25): 6506–6511. Bibcode:2018PNAS..115.6506B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1711842115. PMC 6016768. PMID 29784790.
125. Sandom, Christopher; Faurby, Søren; Sandel, Brody; Svenning, Jens-Christian (4 June 2014). "Global late Quaternary megafauna extinctions linked to humans, not climate change". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 281 (1787): 20133254. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.3254. PMC 4071532. PMID 24898370.
126. Smith, Felisa A.; Elliott Smith, Rosemary E.; Lyons, S. Kathleen; Payne, Jonathan L. (April 20, 2018). "Body size downgrading of mammals over the late Quaternary". Science. 360 (6386): 310–313. Bibcode:2018Sci...360..310S. doi:10.1126/science.aao5987. PMID 29674591.
127. Dembitzer, Jacob; Barkai, Ran; Ben-Dor, Miki; Meiri, Shai (2022). "Levantine overkill: 1.5 million years of hunting down the body size distribution". Quaternary Science Reviews. 276: 107316. Bibcode:2022QSRv..27607316D. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107316. S2CID 245236379.
128. Bergman, Juraj; Pedersen, Rasmus Ø; Lundgren, Erick J.; Lemoine, Rhys T.; Monsarrat, Sophie; Pearce, Elena A.; Schierup, Mikkel H.; Svenning, Jens-Christian (24 November 2023). "Worldwide Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene population declines in extant megafauna are associated with Homo sapiens expansion rather than climate change". Nature Communications. 14 (1): 7679. Bibcode:2023NatCo..14.7679B. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-43426-5. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 10667484. PMID 37996436.
129. Carrington, Damian (May 23, 2019). "Humans causing shrinking of nature as larger animals die off". The Guardian. Archived from the original on February 24, 2021. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
130. Matthews, Thomas J.; Triantis, Kostas A.; Wayman, Joseph P.; Martin, Thomas E.; Hume, Julian P.; Cardoso, Pedro; Faurby, Søren; Mendenhall, Chase D.; Dufour, Paul; Rigal, François; Cooke, Rob; Whittaker, Robert J.; Pigot, Alex L.; Thébaud, Christophe; Jørgensen, Maria Wagner (4 October 2024). "The global loss of avian functional and phylogenetic diversity from anthropogenic extinctions". Science. 386 (6717): 55–60. Bibcode:2024Sci...386...55M. doi:10.1126/science.adk7898. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 39361743. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
131. ^ Ruddiman, W.F. (2009). "Effect of per-capita land use changes on Holocene forest clearance and CO₂ emissions". Quaternary Science Reviews. 28 (27–28): 3011–3015. Bibcode:2009QSRv...28.3011R. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.05.022.
132. Vitousek, P. M.; Mooney, H. A.; Lubchenco, J.; Melillo, J. M. (1997). "Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems". Science. 277 (5325): 494–499. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.318.6529. doi:10.1126/science.277.5325.494. S2CID 8610995.
133. Teyssèdre, A. (2004). "Biodiversity and Global Change". Towards a sixth mass extinction crisis?. Paris: ADPF. ISBN 978-2-914-935289.
134. Gaston, K.J.; Blackburn, T.N.G.; Klein Goldewijk, K. (2003). "Habitat conversion and global avian biodiversity loss". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 270 (1521): 1293–1300. doi:10.1098/rspb.2002.2303. PMC 1691371. PMID 12816643.
135. Teyssèdre, A.; Couvet, D. (2007). "Expected impact of agriculture expansion on the global avifauna". C. R. Biologies. 30 (3): 247–254. doi:10.1016/j.crvi.2007.01.003. PMID 17434119. Archived from the original on 2023-10-30. Retrieved 2023-10-05.
136. "Measuring extinction, species by species". Reuters. 2008-11-06. Archived from the original on 2013-05-02. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
137. ^ Lynch, Patrick (15 December 2011). "Secrets from the past point to rapid climate change in the future". NASA's Earth Science News Team. Archived from the original on 29 June 2016. Retrieved 2 April 2016.
138. ^ Ruddiman, W.F. (2013). "The Anthropocene". Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. 41: 45–68. Bibcode:2013AREPS..41...45R. doi:10.1146/annurev-earth-050212-123944.
139. ^ Tollefson, Jeff (2011-03-25). "The 8,000-year-old climate puzzle". Nature News. doi:10.1038/news.2011.184. Archived from the original on 2021-03-08. Retrieved 2016-04-08.
140. Adams, Jonathan M. (1997). "Global land environments since the last interglacial". Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN, USA. Archived from the original on 2008-01-16. Retrieved 2023-01-06.
141. Graham, R. W.; Mead, J. I. (1987). "Environmental fluctuations and evolution of mammalian faunas during the last deglaciation in North America". In Ruddiman, W. F.; Wright, J. H. E. (eds.). North America and Adjacent Oceans During the Last Deglaciation. The Geology of North America. Vol. K-3. Geological Society of America. ISBN 978-0-8137-5203-7.
142. Martin, P. S. (1967). "Prehistoric overkill". In Martin, P. S.; Wright, H. E. (eds.). Pleistocene extinctions: The search for a cause. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-00755-8.
143. Lyons, S.K.; Smith, F.A.; Brown, J.H. (2004). "Of mice, mastodons and men: human-mediated extinctions on four continents" (PDF). Evolutionary Ecology Research. 6: 339–358. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
144. Firestone RB, West A, Kennett JP, et al. (October 2007). "Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104 (41): 16016–16021. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10416016F. doi:10.1073/pnas.0706977104. PMC 1994902. PMID 17901202.
145. Bunch TE, Hermes RE, Moore AM, Kennettd DJ, Weaver JC, Wittke JH, DeCarli PS, Bischoff JL, Hillman GC, Howard GA, Kimbel DR, Kletetschka G, Lipo CP, Sakai S, Revay Z, West A, Firestone RB, Kennett JP (June 2012). "Very high-temperature impact melt products as evidence for cosmic airbursts and impacts 12,900 years ago". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 109 (28): E1903–12. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109E1903B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1204453109. PMC 3396500. PMID 22711809.
146. Boslough, Mark (March 2023). "Apocalypse!". Skeptic Magazine. 28 (1): 51–59. Archived from the original on 2023-11-27. Retrieved 2023-06-19.
147. ^ Estrada, Alejandro; Garber, Paul A.; Rylands, Anthony B.; Roos, Christian; Fernandez-Duque, Eduardo; Di Fiore, Anthony; Anne-Isola Nekaris, K.; Nijman, Vincent; Heymann, Eckhard W.; Lambert, Joanna E.; Rovero, Francesco; Barelli, Claudia; Setchell, Joanna M.; Gillespie, Thomas R.; Mittermeier, Russell A.; Arregoitia, Luis Verde; de Guinea, Miguel; Gouveia, Sidney; Dobrovolski, Ricardo; Shanee, Sam; et al. (January 18, 2017). "Impending extinction crisis of the world's primates: Why primates matter". Science Advances. 3 (1): e1600946. Bibcode:2017SciA....3E0946E. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1600946. PMC 5242557. PMID 28116351.
148. Crist, Eileen; Cafaro, Philip, eds. (2012). Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. University of Georgia Press. p. 83. ISBN 978-0820343853.
149. Greenfield, Patrick (December 6, 2022). "'We are at war with nature': UN environment chief warns of biodiversity apocalypse". The Guardian. Retrieved January 14, 2023. 'We've just welcomed the 8 billionth member of the human race on this planet. That's a wonderful birth of a baby, of course. But we need to understand that the more people there are, the more we put the Earth under heavy pressure. As far as biodiversity is concerned, we are at war with nature. We need to make peace with nature. Because nature is what sustains everything on Earth … the science is unequivocal.' – Inger Andersen
150. ^ Hickel, Jason (2021). Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. Windmill Books. pp. 39–40. ISBN 978-1786091215. It was only with the rise of capitalism over the past few hundred years, and the breathtaking acceleration of industrialization from the 1950s, that on a planetary scale things began to tip out of balance.
151. Foster, John Bellamy (2022). Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution. Monthly Review Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-1583679746. Archived from the original on 2022-11-09. Retrieved 2022-11-07. The advent of the Anthropocene coincided with a planetary rift, as the human economy under capitalism heedlessly crossed, or began to cross, Earth System boundaries, fouling its own nest and threatening the destruction of the planet as a safe home for humanity.
152. Derber, Charles; Moodliar, Suren (2023). Dying for Capitalism: How Big Money Fuels Extinction and What We Can Do About It. Routledge. ISBN 978-1032512587.
153. ^ Dawson, Ashley (2016). Extinction: A Radical History. OR Books. pp. 41, 100–101. ISBN 978-1-944869-01-4. Archived from the original on 2016-09-17. Retrieved 2016-08-20.
154. Harvey, David (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. p. 173. ISBN 978-0199283279. Archived from the original on 2021-11-28. Retrieved 2018-08-06.
155. Rees, William E. (2020). "Ecological economics for humanity's plague phase" (PDF). Ecological Economics. 169: 106519. Bibcode:2020EcoEc.16906519R. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106519. S2CID 209502532. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-05-25.
156. Weston, Phoebe (October 24, 2022). "Business groups block action that could help tackle biodiversity crisis, report finds". The Guardian. Retrieved October 25, 2022.
157. "Why is the giraffe facing a silent extinction?". Al Jazeera. July 5, 2023. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
158. Primack, Richard (2014). Essentials of Conservation Biology. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers. pp. 217–245. ISBN 978-1-605-35289-3.
159. "Tracking and combatting our current mass extinction". Ars Technica. 2014-07-25. Archived from the original on 2019-04-12. Retrieved 2015-11-30.
160. ^ Dirzo, R.; Galetti, M. (2013). "Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Living in a Defaunated World". Biological Conservation. 163: 1–6. Bibcode:2013BCons.163....1G. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2013.04.020.
161. Vergano, Dan (October 28, 2011). "Lions, tigers, big cats may face extinction in 20 years". USA Today. Archived from the original on 2016-04-14. Retrieved 2017-08-29.
162. Visser, Nick (December 27, 2016). "Cheetahs Are Far Closer To Extinction Than We Realized". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on December 28, 2016. Retrieved December 27, 2016.
163. Duranta, Sarah M.; Mitchell, Nicholas; Groom, Rosemary; Pettorelli, Nathalie; Ipavec, Audrey; Jacobson, Andrew P.; Woodroffe, Rosie; Böhm, Monika; Hunter, Luke T. B.; Becker, Matthew S.; Broekhuis, Femke; Bashir, Sultana; Andresen, Leah; Aschenborn, Ortwin; Beddiaf, Mohammed; Belbachir, Farid; Belbachir-Bazi, Amel; Berbash, Ali; Brandao de Matos Machado, Iracelma; Breitenmoser, Christine; et al. (2016). "The global decline of cheetah Acinonyx jubatus and what it means for conservation". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 114 (3): 1–6. doi:10.1073/pnas.1611122114. PMC 5255576. PMID 28028225.
164. Albrecht, Jörg; Bartoń, Kamil A.; Selva, Nuria; Sommer, Robert S.; Swenson, Jon E.; Bischof, Richard (4 September 2017). "Humans and climate change drove the Holocene decline of the brown bear". Scientific Reports. 7 (1): 10399. Bibcode:2017NatSR...710399A. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-10772-6. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 5583342. PMID 28871202.
165. Kluser, S.; Peduzzi, P. (2007). "Global pollinator decline: a literature review".
166. Dirzo, Rodolfo; Young, Hillary S.; Galetti, Mauro; Ceballos, Gerardo; Isaac, Nick J. B.; Collen, Ben (2014). "Defaunation in the Anthropocene" (PDF). Science. 345 (6195): 401–406. Bibcode:2014Sci...345..401D. doi:10.1126/science.1251817. PMID 25061202. S2CID 206555761. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 11, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2016.
167. Carrington, Damian (18 October 2017). "Warning of 'ecological Armageddon' after dramatic plunge in insect numbers". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 July 2022. Retrieved 18 October 2017.
168. Sánchez-Bayo, Francisco; Wyckhuys, Kris A.G. (April 2019). "Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers". Biological Conservation. 232: 8–27. Bibcode:2019BCons.232....8S. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2019.01.020. S2CID 91685233.
169. Briggs, Helen (October 30, 2019). "'Alarming' loss of insects and spiders recorded". BBC. Archived from the original on November 3, 2019. Retrieved November 2, 2019.
170. Lewis, Sophie (January 12, 2021). "Scientists warn the world's insects are undergoing "death by a thousand cuts"". CBS News. Archived from the original on February 9, 2021. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
171. Weston, Phoebe (January 10, 2023). "Madagascar's unique wildlife faces imminent wave of extinction, say scientists". The Guardian. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
172. "Atlas of Population and Environment". AAAS. 2000. Archived from the original on 2011-03-09. Retrieved 2008-02-12.
173. "A northern white rhino has died. There are now five left in the entire world". The Washington Post. 15 December 2014.
174. "Northern white rhino: Last male Sudan dies in Kenya". British Broadcasting Corporation. March 20, 2018.
175. Douglas Main (2013-11-22). "7 Iconic Animals Humans Are Driving to Extinction". livescience.com. Archived from the original on 2023-01-06. Retrieved 2023-01-06.
176. Platt, John R. (October 25, 2011). "Poachers Drive Javan Rhino to Extinction in Vietnam [Updated]". Scientific American. Archived from the original on November 17, 2011. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
177. Inus, Kristy (April 18, 2019). "Sumatran rhinos extinct in the wild". The Star Online. Archived from the original on April 26, 2019. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
178. Fletcher, Martin (January 31, 2015). "Pangolins: why this cute prehistoric mammal is facing extinction". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2022-01-11. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
179. Carrington, Damian (December 8, 2016). "Giraffes facing extinction after devastating decline, experts warn". The Guardian. Archived from the original on August 13, 2021. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
180. ^ Sutter, John D. (December 12, 2016). "Imagine a world without giraffes". CNN. Archived from the original on 2020-03-01. Retrieved 2022-11-10.
181. Pennisi, Elizabeth (October 18, 2016). "People are hunting primates, bats, and other mammals to extinction". Science. Archived from the original on October 20, 2021. Retrieved November 21, 2016.
182. Ripple, William J.; Abernethy, Katharine; Betts, Matthew G.; Chapron, Guillaume; Dirzo, Rodolfo; Galetti, Mauro; Levi, Taal; Lindsey, Peter A.; Macdonald, David W.; Machovina, Brian; Newsome, Thomas M.; Peres, Carlos A.; Wallach, Arian D.; Wolf, Christopher; Young, Hillary (2016). "Bushmeat hunting and extinction risk to the world's mammals". Royal Society Open Science. 3 (10): 1–16. Bibcode:2016RSOS....360498R. doi:10.1098/rsos.160498. PMC 5098989. PMID 27853564.
183. Benítez-López, A.; Alkemade, R.; Schipper, A. M.; Ingram, D. J.; Verweij, P. A.; Eikelboom, J. A. J.; Huijbregts, M. A. J. (April 14, 2017). "The impact of hunting on tropical mammal and bird populations". Science. 356 (6334): 180–183. Bibcode:2017Sci...356..180B. doi:10.1126/science.aaj1891. hdl:1874/349694. PMID 28408600. S2CID 19603093.
184. Milman, Oliver (February 6, 2019). "The killing of large species is pushing them towards extinction, study finds". The Guardian. Archived from the original on February 7, 2019. Retrieved February 8, 2019.
185. Ripple, William J.; Wolf, Christopher; Newsome, Thomas M.; Betts, Matthew G.; Ceballos, Gerardo; Courchamp, Franck; Hayward, Matt W.; Van Valkenburgh, Blaire; Wallach, Arian D.; Worm, Boris (2019). "Are we eating the world's megafauna to extinction?". Conservation Letters. 12 (3). e12627. Bibcode:2019ConL...12E2627R. doi:10.1111/conl.12627.
186. Wilcox, Christie (October 17, 2018). "Human-caused extinctions have set mammals back millions of years". National Geographic. Archived from the original on May 7, 2021. Retrieved March 14, 2022.
187. Yong, Ed (October 15, 2018). "It Will Take Millions of Years for Mammals to Recover From Us". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on November 3, 2018. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
188. Green, Graeme (April 27, 2022). "One in five reptiles faces extinction in what would be a 'devastating' blow". The Guardian. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
189. Cox, Neil; Young, Bruce E.; et al. (2022). "A global reptile assessment highlights shared conservation needs of tetrapods". Nature. 605 (7909): 285–290. Bibcode:2022Natur.605..285C. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04664-7. PMC 9095493. PMID 35477765.
190. "History of the Convention". Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Archived from the original on 4 December 2016. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
191. Glowka, Lyle; Burhenne-Guilmin, Françoise; Synge, Hugh; McNeely, Jeffrey A.; Gündling, Lothar (1994). IUCN environmental policy and law paper. Guide to the Convention on Biodiversity. International Union for Conservation of Nature. ISBN 978-2-8317-0222-3.
192. "60 percent of global wildlife species wiped out". Al Jazeera. 28 October 2016. Archived from the original on 5 August 2020. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
193. Carrington, Damian (February 24, 2023). "Ecosystem collapse 'inevitable' unless wildlife losses reversed". The Guardian. Archived from the original on February 25, 2023. Retrieved February 25, 2023. The researchers concluded: 'A biodiversity crash may be the harbinger of a more devastating ecosystem collapse.'
194. Fisher, Diana O.; Blomberg, Simon P. (2011). "Correlates of rediscovery and the detectability of extinction in mammals". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 278 (1708): 1090–1097. doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.1579. PMC 3049027. PMID 20880890.
195. "Extinction continues apace". International Union for Conservation of Nature. 3 November 2009. Archived from the original on 29 July 2012. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
196. Jiang, Z.; Harris, R.B. (2016). "Elaphurus davidianus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2016: e.T7121A22159785. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-2.RLTS.T7121A22159785.en. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
197. BirdLife International (2016). "Corvus hawaiiensis". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2016: e.T22706052A94048187. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22706052A94048187.en.
198. McKinney, Michael L.; Schoch, Robert; Yonavjak, Logan (2013). "Conserving Biological Resources". Environmental Science: Systems and Solutions (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning. ISBN 978-1-4496-6139-7.
199. Perrin, William F.; Würsig, Bernd G.; JGM "Hans" Thewissen (2009). Encyclopedia of marine mammals. Academic Press. p. 404. ISBN 978-0-12-373553-9.
200. Spotila, James R.; Tomillo, Pilar S. (2015). The Leatherback Turtle: Biology and Conservation. Johns Hopkins University. p. 210. ISBN 978-1-4214-1708-0.
201. Druker, Simon (April 21, 2022). "Study: Humans interrupting 66-million-year-old relationship among animals". UPI. Archived from the original on April 24, 2022. Retrieved April 24, 2022.
202. Cooke, Rob; Gearty, William; et al. (2022). "Anthropogenic disruptions to longstanding patterns of trophic-size structure in vertebrates". Nature Ecology & Evolution. 6 (6): 684–692. Bibcode:2022NatEE...6..684C. doi:10.1038/s41559-022-01726-x. PMID 35449460. S2CID 248323833. Archived from the original on 2022-10-26. Retrieved 2022-11-23.
203. Mooers, Arne (January 16, 2020). "Bird species are facing extinction hundreds of times faster than previously thought". The Conversation. Archived from the original on March 4, 2021. Retrieved January 18, 2020.
204. Torres, Luisa (September 23, 2019). "When We Love Our Food So Much That It Goes Extinct". NPR. Archived from the original on December 3, 2021. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
205. Hooke, R. LeB.; Martin-Duque, J. F.; Pedraza, J. (2012). "Land transformation by humans: A review" (PDF). GSA Today. 22 (12): 4–10. Bibcode:2012GSAT...12l...4H. doi:10.1130/GSAT151A.1. S2CID 120172847. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-01-11. Retrieved 2024-02-14.
206. Reints, Renae (March 6, 2019). "1,700 Species Will Likely Go Extinct Due to Human Land Use, Study Says". Fortune. Archived from the original on February 24, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
207. Walter Jetz; Powers, Ryan P. (4 March 2019). "Global habitat loss and extinction risk of terrestrial vertebrates under future land-use-change scenarios". Nature Climate Change. 9 (4): 323–329. Bibcode:2019NatCC...9..323P. doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0406-z. S2CID 92315899.
208. Cox, Lisa (12 March 2019). "'Almost certain extinction': 1,200 species under severe threat across world". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
209. Venter, Oscar; Atkinson, Scott C.; Possingham, Hugh P.; O’Bryan, Christopher J.; Marco, Moreno Di; Watson, James E. M.; Allan, James R. (12 March 2019). "Hotspots of human impact on threatened terrestrial vertebrates". PLOS Biology. 17 (3): e3000158. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000158. PMC 6413901. PMID 30860989.
210. "Migratory river fish populations down 76% since 1970: study". Agence France-Presse. July 28, 2020. Archived from the original on October 6, 2020. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
211. "Deforestation in Malaysian Borneo". NASA. 2009. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
212. Foster, Joanna M. (1 May 2012). "A Grim Portrait of Palm Oil Emissions". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 16 January 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
213. Rosenthal, Elisabeth (31 January 2007). "Once a Dream Fuel, Palm Oil May Be an Eco-Nightmare". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 9 September 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
214. Morell, Virginia (August 11, 2015). "Meat-eaters may speed worldwide species extinction, study warns". Science. Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
215. Johnston, Ian (August 26, 2017). "Industrial farming is driving the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, says leading academic". The Independent. Archived from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved September 4, 2017.
216. Devlin, Hannah (July 19, 2018). "Rising global meat consumption 'will devastate environment'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on October 9, 2019. Retrieved July 22, 2018.
217. Steinfeld, Henning; Gerber, Pierre; Wassenaar, Tom; Castel, Vincent; Rosales, Mauricio; de Haan, Cees (2006). Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options (PDF). Food and Agriculture Organization. p. xxiii. ISBN 978-92-5-105571-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-12-10. Retrieved 2017-05-14.
218. ^ Woodyatt, Amy (May 26, 2020). "Human activity threatens billions of years of evolutionary history, researchers warn". CNN. Archived from the original on May 26, 2020. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
219. Briggs, Helen (May 26, 2020). "'Billions of years of evolutionary history' under threat". BBC. Archived from the original on January 30, 2021. Retrieved October 5, 2020. The researchers calculated the amount of evolutionary history – branches on the tree of life – that are currently threatened with extinction, using extinction risk data for more than 25,000 species. They found a combined 50 billion years of evolutionary heritage, at least, were under threat from human impacts such as urban development, deforestation and road building.
220. Thompson, Ken; Jones, Allan (February 1999). "Human Population Density and Prediction of Local Plant Extinction in Britain". Conservation Biology. 13 (1): 185–189. Bibcode:1999ConBi..13..185T. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1999.97353.x. JSTOR 2641578. S2CID 84308784. Archived from the original on 6 January 2023. Retrieved 6 January 2023.
221. Slezak, Michael (14 June 2016). "Revealed: first mammal species wiped out by human-induced climate change". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
222. Chen, Xuefei; D'Olivo, Juan Pablo; Wei, Gangjian; McCulloch, Malcolm (15 August 2019). "Anthropogenic ocean warming and acidification recorded by Sr/Ca, Li/Mg, δ11B and B/Ca in Porites coral from the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 528: 50–59. Bibcode:2019PPP...528...50C. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2019.04.033. S2CID 155148474. Archived from the original on 6 December 2022. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
223. "Plastics in the Ocean". Ocean Conservancy. 2017-03-07. Archived from the original on 2021-02-20. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
224. Ketcham, Christopher (December 3, 2022). "Addressing Climate Change Will Not "Save the Planet"". The Intercept. Archived from the original on February 18, 2024. Retrieved December 6, 2022. When it comes to effects on wildlife, climate change is more like a mule, slow and plodding. Yes, a warmed atmosphere is projected to be a significant factor in the extinction crisis in future decades, but what's destroying species today is habitat fragmentation and loss, overhunting and overexploitation, agricultural expansion, pollution, and industrial development. It isn't climate change that caused a 69 percent loss in total wildlife populations between 1970 and 2018, according to a World Wildlife Fund study published this year. The cause is too many people demanding too much from ecosystems, or human overshoot of the biophysical carrying capacity of the Earth.
225. Caro, Tim; Rowe, Zeke; et al. (2022). "An inconvenient misconception: Climate change is not the principal driver of biodiversity loss". Conservation Letters. 15 (3): e12868. Bibcode:2022ConL...15E2868C. doi:10.1111/conl.12868. S2CID 246172852.
226. Song, Haijun; Kemp, David B.; Tian, Li; Chu, Daoliang; Song, Huyue; Dai, Xu (4 August 2021). "Thresholds of temperature change for mass extinctions". Nature Communications. 12 (1): 4694. Bibcode:2021NatCo..12.4694S. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-25019-2. PMC 8338942. PMID 34349121.
227. Morell, Virginia (February 1, 2017). "World's most endangered marine mammal down to 30 individuals". Science. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
228. "World's most endangered marine mammal is now down to 10 animals". New Scientist. March 15, 2019. Retrieved March 16, 2019.
229. Redford, K. H. (1992). "The empty forest" (PDF). BioScience. 42 (6): 412–422. doi:10.2307/1311860. JSTOR 1311860. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-02-28. Retrieved 2017-01-10.
230. Peres, Carlos A.; Nascimento, Hilton S. (2006). "Impact of Game Hunting by the Kayapo´ of South-eastern Amazonia: Implications for Wildlife Conservation in Tropical Forest Indigenous Reserves". Human Exploitation and Biodiversity Conservation. Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation. Vol. 3. pp. 287–313. ISBN 978-1-4020-5283-5.
231. Altrichter, M.; Boaglio, G. (2004). "Distribution and Relative Abundance of Peccaries in the Argentine Chaco: Associations with Human Factors". Biological Conservation. 116 (2): 217–225. Bibcode:2004BCons.116..217A. doi:10.1016/S0006-3207(03)00192-7.
232. Milman, Oliver (April 19, 2017). "Giraffes must be listed as endangered, conservationists formally tell US". The Guardian. Archived from the original on April 30, 2018. Retrieved April 29, 2018.
233. UNEP; CITES; IUCN; TRAFFIC (2013). Elephants in the Dust – The African Elephant Crisis (PDF) (A Rapid Response Assessment). United Nations Environment Programme. Printed by Birkeland Trykkeri AS, Norway. ISBN 978-82-7701-111-0. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-08-10.
234. ^ "African Elephant Population Dropped 30 Percent in 7 Years". The New York Times. September 1, 2016. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
235. Marche, Stephen (November 7, 2016). "This Is the Most Important Issue That's Not Being Talked About in This Election". Esquire. Archived from the original on March 14, 2022. Retrieved March 14, 2022.
236. McKenzie, David; Formanek, Ingrid (September 1, 2016). "Our living dinosaurs". CNN. Archived from the original on 2021-02-13. Retrieved 2022-11-10.
237. McKenzie, David (December 31, 2016). "We are failing the elephants". CNN. Archived from the original on 2021-02-06. Retrieved 2022-11-10.
238. Roberts, Callum (2007). The Unnatural History of the Sea.
239. Claudia Geib (July 16, 2020). "North Atlantic right whales now officially 'one step from extinction'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on April 8, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2020.
240. Briggs, Helen (December 4, 2018). "World's strangest sharks and rays 'on brink of extinction'". BBC. Archived from the original on February 7, 2021. Retrieved December 10, 2018.
241. Payne, Jonathan L.; Bush, Andrew M.; Heim, Noel A.; Knope, Matthew L.; McCauley, Douglas J. (2016). "Ecological selectivity of the emerging mass extinction in the oceans". Science. 353 (6305): 1284–1286. Bibcode:2016Sci...353.1284P. doi:10.1126/science.aaf2416. PMID 27629258.
242. Osborne, Hannah (April 17, 2020). "Great White Sharks Among Marine Megafauna That Could Go Extinct in Next 100 Years, Study Warns". Newsweek. Archived from the original on February 22, 2021. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
243. Yeung, Jessie (January 28, 2021). "Shark and ray populations have dropped 70% and are nearing 'point of no return,' study warns". CNN. Archived from the original on March 7, 2021. Retrieved January 28, 2021.
244. Pacoureau, Nathan; Rigby, Cassandra L.; et al. (2021). "Half a century of global decline in oceanic sharks and rays". Nature. 589 (7843): 567–571. Bibcode:2021Natur.589..567P. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-03173-9. hdl:10871/124531. PMID 33505035. S2CID 231723355.
245. Einhorn, Catrin (January 27, 2021). "Shark Populations Are Crashing, With a 'Very Small Window' to Avert Disaster". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 31, 2021. Retrieved February 2, 2021.
246. Sherman, C. Samantha; Simpfendorfer, Colin A.; et al. (2023). "Half a century of rising extinction risk of coral reef sharks and rays". Nature Communications. 14 (15): 15. Bibcode:2023NatCo..14...15S. doi:10.1038/s41467-022-35091-x. PMC 9845228. PMID 36650137.
247. Vaughan, Adam (September 14, 2016). "Humanity driving 'unprecedented' marine extinction". The Guardian. Archived from the original on May 6, 2021. Retrieved September 20, 2016.
248. Ochoa-Ochoa, L.; Whittaker, R. J.; Ladle, R. J. (2013). "The demise of the golden toad and the creation of a climate change icon species". Conservation and Society. 11 (3): 291–319. doi:10.4103/0972-4923.121034.
249. Hance, Jeremy (27 October 2016). "Frog goes extinct, media yawns". The Guardian.
250. Mendelson, J.R.; Angulo, A. (2009). "Ecnomiohyla rabborum". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2009: e.T158613A5241303. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2009-2.RLTS.T158613A5241303.en. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
251. Scheele, Ben C.; et al. (March 29, 2019). "Amphibian fungal panzootic causes catastrophic and ongoing loss of biodiversity" (PDF). Science. 363 (6434): 1459–1463. Bibcode:2019Sci...363.1459S. doi:10.1126/science.aav0379. hdl:1885/160196. PMID 30923224. S2CID 85565860. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved June 27, 2019.
252. Blehert, D. S.; Hicks, A. C.; Behr, M.; Meteyer, C. U.; Berlowski-Zier, B. M.; Buckles, E. L.; Coleman, J. T. H.; Darling, S. R.; Gargas, A.; Niver, R.; Okoniewski, J. C.; Rudd, R. J.; Stone, W. B. (9 January 2009). "Bat White-Nose Syndrome: An Emerging Fungal Pathogen?". Science. 323 (5911): 227. doi:10.1126/science.1163874. PMID 18974316. S2CID 23869393.
253. Benjamin, A.; Holpuch, A.; Spencer, R. (2013). "Buzzfeeds: The effects of colony collapse disorder and other bee news". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 21 August 2015.
254. "Multiple causes for colony collapse – report". 3 News NZ. 3 May 2013. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
255. Cepero, Almudena; Ravoet, Jorgen; Gómez-Moracho, Tamara; Bernal, José Luis; Del Nozal, Maria J.; Bartolomé, Carolina; Maside, Xulio; Meana, Aránzazu; González-Porto, Amelia V.; de Graaf, Dirk C.; Martín-Hernández, Raquel; Higes, Mariano (15 September 2014). "Holistic screening of collapsing honey bee colonies in Spain: a case study". BMC Research Notes. 7: 649. doi:10.1186/1756-0500-7-649. ISSN 1756-0500. PMC 4180541. PMID 25223634.
256. ^ Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max (2021-04-15). "Habitat Loss". Our World in Data. Archived from the original on 2022-03-10. Retrieved 2022-03-10.
257. Elias, S. A.; Schreve, D. C. (2013). "Late Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions" (PDF). Vertebrate Records. Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier. pp. 700–711.
258. Pushkina, D.; Raia, P. (2008). "Human influence on distribution and extinctions of the late Pleistocene Eurasian megafauna". Journal of Human Evolution. 54 (6): 769–782. Bibcode:2008JHumE..54..769P. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2007.09.024. PMID 18199470.
259. Mann, Daniel H.; Groves, Pamela; Reanier, Richard E.; Gaglioti, Benjamin V.; Kunz, Michael L.; Shapiro, Beth (2015). "Life and extinction of megafauna in the ice-age Arctic". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 112 (46): 14301–14306. Bibcode:2015PNAS..11214301M. doi:10.1073/pnas.1516573112. PMC 4655518. PMID 26578776.
260. Gil-García, María José; Ruiz-Zapata, Blanca; Ortiz, José E.; Torres, Trinidad; Ros, Milagros; Ramallo, Sebastián; López-Cilla, Ignacio; Galán, Luis A.; Sánchez-Palencia, Yolanda; Manteca, Ignacio; Rodríguez-Estrella, Tomás; Blázquez, Ana; Gómez-Borrego, Ángeles (1 March 2022). "Paleoenvironmental variability and anthropic influence during the last 7300 years in the western Mediterranean based on the pollen record of Cartagena Bay, SE Spain". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 589: 110839. Bibcode:2022PPP...58910839G. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2022.110839. hdl:20.500.12466/3874. Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
261. Lambert, C.; Penaud, A.; Vidal, M.; Gandini, C.; Labeyrie, L.; Chavaud, L.; Ehrhold, A. (15 December 2020). "Striking forest revival at the end of the Roman Period in north-western Europe". Scientific Reports. 10 (1): 21984. Bibcode:2020NatSR..1021984L. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-77253-1. PMC 7738505. PMID 33319781.
262. Cheng, Zhongjing; Weng, Chengyu; Steinke, Stephan; Mohtadi, Mahyar (29 October 2018). "Anthropogenic modification of vegetated landscapes in southern China from 6,000 years ago". Nature Geoscience. 11 (12): 939–943. Bibcode:2018NatGe..11..939C. doi:10.1038/s41561-018-0250-1. S2CID 133729236. Archived from the original on 12 April 2023. Retrieved 11 April 2023.
263. ^ Haynes, Gary (2002). The early settlement of North America : the Clovis era. Cambridge. pp. 18–19. ISBN 0-521-81900-8. OCLC 49327000.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
264. Martin, P.S. (1995). "Mammoth Extinction: Two Continents and Wrangel Island". Radiocarbon. 37 (1): 7–10. Bibcode:1995Radcb..37....7M. doi:10.1017/s0033822200014739.
265. Pitulko, V. V.; Nikolsky, P. A.; Girya, E. Y.; Basilyan, A. E.; Tumskoy, V. E.; Koulakov, S. A.; Astakhov, S. N.; Pavlova, E. Y.; Anisimov, M. A. (2004). "The Yana RHS site: Humans in the Arctic before the Last Glacial Maximum". Science. 303 (5654): 52–56. Bibcode:2004Sci...303...52P. doi:10.1126/science.1085219. PMID 14704419. S2CID 206507352. Archived from the original on 22 March 2023. Retrieved 21 March 2023.
266. Murchie, Tyler J.; Monteath, Alistair J.; Mahony, Matthew E.; Long, George S.; Cocker, Scott; Sadoway, Tara; Karpinski, Emil; Zazula, Grant; MacPhee, Ross D. E.; Froese, Duane; Poinar, Hendrik N. (8 December 2021). "Collapse of the mammoth-steppe in central Yukon as revealed by ancient environmental DNA". Nature Communications. 12 (1): 7120. Bibcode:2021NatCo..12.7120M. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-27439-6. PMC 8654998. PMID 34880234.
267. Seersholm, Frederik V.; Werndly, Daniel J.; Grealy, Alicia; Johnson, Taryn; Keenan Early, Erin M.; Lundelius Jr., Ernest L.; Winsborough, Barbara; Farr, Grayal Earle; Toomey, Rickard; Hansen, Anders J.; Shapiro, Beth; Waters, Michael R.; McDonald, Gregory; Linderholm, Anna; Stafford Jr., Thomas W.; Bunce, Michael (2 June 2020). "Rapid range shifts and megafaunal extinctions associated with late Pleistocene climate change". Nature Communications. 11 (1): 2770. Bibcode:2020NatCo..11.2770S. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-16502-3. PMC 7265304. PMID 32488006.
268. Louys, Julien; Braje, Todd J.; Chang, Chun-Hsiang; Cosgrove, Richard; Fitzpatrick, Scott M.; Fujita, Masaki; Hawkins, Stuart; Ingicco, Stuart; Kawamura, Ai; MacPhee, Ross D. E.; McDowell, Matthew C.; Meijer, Hanneke J. M.; Piper, Philip J.; Roberts, Patrick; Simmons, Alan H.; Van den Bergh, Gerrit; Van der Geer, Alexandra; Kealy, Shimona; O'Connor, Sue (3 May 2021). "No evidence for widespread island extinctions after Pleistocene hominin arrival". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 118 (20): 1–8. Bibcode:2021PNAS..11823005L. doi:10.1073/pnas.2023005118. PMC 8157961. PMID 33941645.
269. Pym, Felix C.; Franco-Gaviria, Felipe; Espinoza, Ismael G.; Urrego, Dunia H. (26 April 2023). "The timing and ecological consequences of Pleistocene megafaunal decline in the eastern Andes of Colombia". Quaternary Research. 114: 1–17. Bibcode:2023QuRes.114....1P. doi:10.1017/qua.2022.66. hdl:10871/133219. S2CID 258362772. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
270. Rozas-Davila, Angela; Rodbell, Donald T.; Bush, Mark B. (24 January 2023). "Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in the grasslands of Junín-Peru". Journal of Biogeography. 50 (4): 755–766. Bibcode:2023JBiog..50..755R. doi:10.1111/jbi.14566. S2CID 256255790. Archived from the original on 22 March 2023. Retrieved 21 March 2023.
271. Torrence, Robin (6 February 2012). "Volcanic disasters and agricultural intensification: A case study from the Willaumez Peninsula, Papua New Guinea". Quaternary International. 249: 151–161. Bibcode:2012QuInt.249..151T. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2011.03.041. Archived from the original on 17 August 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2024 – via Elsevier Science Direct.
272. Woinarski, J., Murphy, B., et al. (2019) Scientists re-counted Australia’s extinct species, and the result is devastating, The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/scientists-re-counted-australias-extinct-species-and-the-result-is-devastating-127611 (Accessed: 09 September 2024).
273. "Australian endangered species list". Australian Geographic. Archived from the original on 2020-02-16. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
274. University of Colorado at Boulder (January 29, 2016). "Ancient extinction of giant Australian bird points to humans". ScienceDaily. Archived from the original on 2020-02-18. Retrieved 2016-02-01.
275. Richard G. Roberts (8 June 2001). "New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent-Wide Extinction About 46,000 Years Ago" (PDF). Science. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 February 2019. Retrieved 1 February 2016.
276. Turney, Chris S. M.; Flannery, Timothy F.; Roberts, Richard G.; Reid, Craig; Fifield, L. Keith; Higham, Tom F. G.; Jacobs, Zenobia; Kemp, Noel; Colhoun, Eric A. (2008-08-21). "Late-surviving megafauna in Tasmania, Australia, implicate human involvement in their extinction". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105 (34): 12150–12153. Bibcode:2008PNAS..10512150T. doi:10.1073/pnas.0801360105. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2527880. PMID 18719103.
277. Miller, Gifford; Magee, John; Smith, Mike; Spooner, Nigel; Baynes, Alexander; Lehman, Scott; Fogel, Marilyn; Johnston, Harvey; Williams, Doug (2016-01-29). "Human predation contributed to the extinction of the Australian megafaunal bird Genyornis newtoni [sim]47 ka". Nature Communications. 7: 10496. Bibcode:2016NatCo...710496M. doi:10.1038/ncomms10496. PMC 4740177. PMID 26823193.
278. Bradshaw, Corey J. A.; Johnson, Christopher N.; Llewelyn, John; Weisbecker, Vera; Strona, Giovanni; Saltré, Frédérik (30 March 2021). "Relative demographic susceptibility does not explain the extinction chronology of Sahul's megafauna". eLife. 10. Cambridge, UK: eLife Sciences Publications. doi:10.7554/eLife.63870. PMC 8043753. PMID 33783356.
279. Woinarski, John C. Z.; Burbidge, Andrew A.; Harrison, Peter L. (14 April 2015). "Ongoing unraveling of a continental fauna: Decline and extinction of Australian mammals since European settlement". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 112 (15): 4531–4540. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.4531W. doi:10.1073/pnas.1417301112. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 4403217. PMID 25675493.
280. Radford, Ian J.; Woolley, Leigh-Ann; Dickman, Chris R.; Corey, Ben; Trembath, Dane; Fairman, Richard (23 February 2020). "Invasive anuran driven trophic cascade: An alternative hypothesis for recent critical weight range mammal collapses across northern Australia". Biological Invasions. 22 (6): 1967–1982. Bibcode:2020BiInv..22.1967R. doi:10.1007/s10530-020-02226-4. ISSN 1387-3547. Retrieved 11 October 2024 – via Springer Link.
281. "North American Extinctions v. World". www.thegreatstory.org. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2016-01-31.
282. Steadman, D.W.; Martin, P.S.; MacPhee, R.D.E.; Jull, A.J.T.; McDonald, H.G.; Woods, C.A.; Iturralde-Vinent, M.; Hodgins, G.W.L. (2005). "Asynchronous extinction of late Quaternary sloths on continents and islands". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 102 (33): 11763–11768. Bibcode:2005PNAS..10211763S. doi:10.1073/pnas.0502777102. PMC 1187974. PMID 16085711.
283. Connor, Simon E.; Van Leeuwen, Jacqueline F. N.; Rittenour, Tammy M.; Van der Knaap, Willem O.; Ammann, Brigitta; Björck, Svante (23 January 2012). "The ecological impact of oceanic island colonization – a palaeoecological perspective from the Azores". Journal of Biogeography. 39 (6): 1007–1023. Bibcode:2012JBiog..39.1007C. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2011.02671.x. hdl:11343/55221. S2CID 86191735. Archived from the original on 3 December 2022. Retrieved 3 December 2022.
284. Góis-Marques, C. A.; Rubiales, J. M.; De Nascimento, L.; Menezes de Sequeira, M.; Fernández-Palacios, J. M.; Madeira, J. (February 2020). "Oceanic Island forests buried by Holocene (Meghalayan) explosive eruptions: palaeobiodiversity in pre-anthropic volcanic charcoal from Faial Island (Azores, Portugal) and its palaeoecological implications". Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology. 273: 104116. Bibcode:2020RPaPa.27304116G. doi:10.1016/j.revpalbo.2019.104116. hdl:10400.13/4177. S2CID 210280909. Archived from the original on 1 January 2023. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
285. Richter, Nora; Russell, James M.; Amaral-Zettler, Linda; DeGroff, Wylie; Raposeiro, Pedro M.; Gonçalves, Vítor; De Boer, Erik J.; Pla-Rabes, Sergi; Hernández, Armand; Benavente, Mario; Ritter, Catarina; Sáez, Alberto; Bao, Roberto; Trigo, Ricardo M.; Prego, Ricardo; Giralt, Santiago (1 June 2022). "Long-term hydroclimate variability in the sub-tropical North Atlantic and anthropogenic impacts on lake ecosystems: A case study from Flores Island, the Azores". Quaternary Science Reviews. 285: 107525. Bibcode:2022QSRv..28507525R. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107525. hdl:10261/269568. Archived from the original on 29 November 2022. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
286. ^ Rando, Juan Carlos; Pieper, Harald; Alcover, Josep Antoni (7 April 2014). "Radiocarbon evidence for the presence of mice on Madeira Island (North Atlantic) one millennium ago". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 281 (1780): 1–5. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.3126. PMC 4027395. PMID 24523273.
287. Goodfriend, Glenn A.; Cameron, Robert A. D.; Cook, L. M. (May 1994). "Fossil Evidence of Recent Human Impact on the Land Snail Fauna of Madeira". Journal of Biogeography. 21 (3): 309–320. Bibcode:1994JBiog..21..309G. doi:10.2307/2845532. JSTOR 2845532. Archived from the original on 30 December 2022. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
288. Teixeira, Dinarte; Groh, Klaus; Yanes, Yurena; Pokryszko, Beata M.; Silva, Isamberto; Cameron, Robert A. D. (7 May 2022). "Late Quaternary land snail faunas of the Desertas Islands (Madeira): high diversity and endemism followed by recent impoverishment and extinction". Journal of Molluscan Studies. 88 (2). doi:10.1093/mollus/eyac010. Archived from the original on 30 December 2022. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
289. Góis-Marques, Carlos A.; Mitchell, Ria L.; de Nascimento, Lea; Fernández-Palacios, José María; Madeira, José; Menezes de Sequeira, Miguel (February 2019). "Eurya stigmosa (Theaceae), a new and extinct record for the Calabrian stage of Madeira Island (Portugal): 40Ar/39Ar dating, palaeoecological and oceanic island palaeobiogeographical implications". Quaternary Science Reviews. 206: 129–140. Bibcode:2019QSRv..206..129G. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.01.008. hdl:10400.13/4182. S2CID 134725615. Archived from the original on 30 December 2022. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
290. ^ Castilla-Beltrán, Alvaro; De Nascimento, Lea; Fernández-Palacios, José-María; Whittaker, Robert J.; Willis, Kathy J.; Edwards, Mary; Nogué, Sandra (27 September 2021). "Anthropogenic transitions from forested to human-dominated landscapes in southern Macaronesia". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 118 (40). Bibcode:2021PNAS..11822215C. doi:10.1073/pnas.2022215118. PMC 8501805. PMID 34580208.
291. ^ Castilla-Beltrán, Alvaro; De Nascimento, Lea; Fernández-Palacios, José-María; Whittaker, Robert J.; Romeiras, Maria M.; Cundy, Andrew B.; Edwards, Mary; Nogué, Sandra (22 March 2021). "Effects of Holocene climate change, volcanism and mass migration on the ecosystem of a small, dry island (Brava, Cabo Verde)". Journal of Biogeography. 48 (6): 1392–1405. Bibcode:2021JBiog..48.1392C. doi:10.1111/jbi.14084. hdl:10400.5/21368. S2CID 233708086. Archived from the original on 29 November 2022. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
292. Castilla-Beltrán, Alvaro; De Nascimento, Lea; Fernández-Palacios, José-María; Fonville, Thierry; Whittaker, Robert J.; Edwards, Mary; Nogué, Sandra (15 June 2019). "Late Holocene environmental change and the anthropization of the highlands of Santo Antão Island, Cabo Verde". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 524: 101–117. Bibcode:2019PPP...524..101C. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2019.03.033. S2CID 120143295. Archived from the original on 29 November 2022. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
293. Steadman, D. W.; Martin, P. S. (2003). "The late Quaternary extinction and future resurrection of birds on Pacific islands". Earth-Science Reviews. 61 (1–2): 133–147. Bibcode:2003ESRv...61..133S. doi:10.1016/S0012-8252(02)00116-2.
294. Steadman, D. W. (1995). "Prehistoric extinctions of Pacific island birds: biodiversity meets zooarchaeology". Science. 267 (5201): 1123–1131. Bibcode:1995Sci...267.1123S. doi:10.1126/science.267.5201.1123. PMID 17789194. S2CID 9137843.
295. Steadman, David W. (1 March 1989). "Extinction of birds in Eastern polynesia: A review of the record, and comparisons with other Pacific Island groups". Journal of Archaeological Science. 16 (2): 177–205. Bibcode:1989JArSc..16..177S. doi:10.1016/0305-4403(89)90065-4. ISSN 0305-4403. Retrieved 20 January 2024 – via Elsevier Science Direct.
296. Steadman, David W.; Pregill, Gregory K.; Burley, David V. (19 March 2002). "Rapid prehistoric extinction of iguanas and birds in Polynesia". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 99 (6): 3673–3677. Bibcode:2002PNAS...99.3673S. doi:10.1073/pnas.072079299. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 122582. PMID 11904427.
297. Kumar, Lalit; Tehrany, Mahyat Shafapour (13 July 2017). "Climate change impacts on the threatened terrestrial vertebrates of the Pacific Islands". Scientific Reports. 7 (1): 5030. Bibcode:2017NatSR...7.5030K. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-05034-4. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 5509733. PMID 28706225.
298. Hume, Julian P.; Hutton, Ian; Middleton, Greg; Nguyen, Jacqueline M.T.; Wylie, John (3 May 2021). "A Terrestrial Vertebrate Palaeontological Reconnaissance of Lord Howe Island, Australia". Pacific Science. 75 (1). doi:10.2984/75.1.2. ISSN 0030-8870. Retrieved 3 July 2024 – via BioOne Digital Library.
299. White, Arthur W.; Worthy, Trevor H.; Hawkins, Stuart; Bedford, Stuart; Spriggs, Matthew (16 August 2010). "Megafaunal meiolaniid horned turtles survived until early human settlement in Vanuatu, Southwest Pacific". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 107 (35): 15512–15516. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10715512W. doi:10.1073/pnas.1005780107. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2932593. PMID 20713711.
300. Stevenson, Janelle (September 2004). "A late-Holocene record of human impact from the southwest coast of New Caledonia". The Holocene. 14 (6): 888–898. Bibcode:2004Holoc..14..888S. doi:10.1191/0959-683604hl755rp. S2CID 44797352. Retrieved 20 January 2024 – via Sage Journals.
301. Anderson, Atholl; Sand, Christophe; Petchey, Fiona; Worthy, Trevor H. (2009). "Faunal extinction and human habitation in New Caledonia: Initial results and implications of new research at the Pindai Caves". Journal of Pacific Archaeology. 1 (1): 89–109. doi:10.70460/jpa.v1i1.12. hdl:10289/5404. Archived from the original on 23 February 2024. Retrieved 20 January 2024.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: ignored DOI errors (link)
302. Pregill, Gregory K.; Steadman, David W. (1 March 2004). "South Pacific Iguanas: Human Impacts and a New Species". Journal of Herpetology. 38 (1): 15–21. doi:10.1670/73-03A. ISSN 0022-1511. S2CID 85627049. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
303. Weisler, Marshall I.; Lambrides, Ariana B. J.; Quintus, Seth; Clark, Jeffrey; Worthy, Trevor H. (2016). "Colonisation and late period faunal assemblages from Ofu Island, American Samoa". Journal of Pacific Archeology. 7 (2): 1–19. doi:10.70460/jpa.v7i2.200. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 20 January 2024.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: ignored DOI errors (link)
304. Steadman, David W.; Kirch, P. V. (1 December 1990). "Prehistoric extinction of birds on Mangaia, Cook Islands, Polynesia". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 87 (24): 9605–9609. Bibcode:1990PNAS...87.9605S. doi:10.1073/pnas.87.24.9605. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 55221. PMID 11607131.
305. Kirch, P V (28 May 1996). "Late Holocene human-induced modifications to a central Polynesian island ecosystem". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 93 (11): 5296–5300. Bibcode:1996PNAS...93.5296K. doi:10.1073/pnas.93.11.5296. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 39239. PMID 8643569.
306. Prebble, Matthew; Anderson, Atholl; Kennett, Douglas J (18 September 2012). "Forest clearance and agricultural expansion on Rapa, Austral Archipelago, French Polynesia". The Holocene. 23 (2): 179–196. doi:10.1177/0959683612455551. ISSN 0959-6836. Archived from the original on 5 June 2024. Retrieved 4 June 2024 – via Sage Journals.
307. Steadman, David W.; Olson, Storrs L. (1 September 1985). "Bird remains from an archaeological site on Henderson Island, South Pacific: Man-caused extinctions on an "uninhabited" island". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 82 (18): 6191–6195. Bibcode:1985PNAS...82.6191S. doi:10.1073/pnas.82.18.6191. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 391018. PMID 16593606.
308. "Controlling Ungulate Populations in native ecosystems in Hawaii" (PDF). Hawaii Conservation Alliance. 22 November 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-05-08.
309. Athens, J. Stephen; Toggle, H. David; Ward, Jerome V.; Welch, David J. (14 November 2014). "Avifaunal extinctions, vegetation change, and Polynesian impacts in prehistoric Hawai'i". Archaeology in Oceania. 37 (2): 57–78. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4453.2002.tb00507.x. ISSN 0728-4896. Archived from the original on 30 November 2023. Retrieved 20 January 2024 – via Wiley Online Library.
310. Flaspohler, David J.; Giardina, Christian P.; Asner, Gregory P.; Hart, Patrick; Price, Jonathan; Lyons, Cassie Ka’apu; Castaneda, Xeronimo (February 2010). "Long-term effects of fragmentation and fragment properties on bird species richness in Hawaiian forests". Biological Conservation. 143 (2): 280–288. Bibcode:2010BCons.143..280F. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.10.009. Archived from the original on 14 October 2023. Retrieved 4 June 2024 – via Elsevier Science Direct.
311. Benning, Tracy L.; LaPointe, Dennis; Atkinson, Carter T.; Vitousek, Peter M. (29 October 2002). "Interactions of climate change with biological invasions and land use in the Hawaiian Islands: Modeling the fate of endemic birds using a geographic information system". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 99 (22): 14246–14249. Bibcode:2002PNAS...9914246B. doi:10.1073/pnas.162372399. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 137869. PMID 12374870.
312. ^ Hansford, James P.; Lister, Adrian M.; Weston, Eleanor M.; Turvey, Samuel T. (July 2021). "Simultaneous extinction of Madagascar's megaherbivores correlates with late Holocene human-caused landscape transformation". Quaternary Science Reviews. 263: 106996. Bibcode:2021QSRv..26306996H. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.106996. S2CID 236313083. Archived from the original on 2023-05-31. Retrieved 2023-05-31.
313. Perez, Ventura R.; Godfrey, Laurie R.; Nowak-Kemp, Malgosia; Burney, David A.; Ratsimbazafy, Jonah; Vasey, Natalia (2005-12-01). "Evidence of early butchery of giant lemurs in Madagascar". Journal of Human Evolution. 49 (6): 722–742. Bibcode:2005JHumE..49..722P. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2005.08.004. PMID 16225904.
314. Li, Hanying; Sinha, Ashish; André, Aurèle Anquetil; Spötl, Christoph; Vonhof, Hubert B.; Meunier, Arnaud; Kathayat, Gayatri; Duan, Pengzhen; Voarintsoa, Ny Riavo G.; Ning, Youfeng; Biswas, Jayant; Hu, Peng; Li, Xianglei; Sha, Lijuan; Zhao, Jingyao; Edwards, R. Lawrence; Cheng, Hai (16 October 2020). "A multimillennial climatic context for the megafaunal extinctions in Madagascar and Mascarene Islands". Science Advances. 6 (42): 1–13. Bibcode:2020SciA....6.2459L. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abb2459. PMC 7567594. PMID 33067226. S2CID 222811671.
315. ^ Godfrey, Laurie R.; Scroxton, Nick; Crowley, Brooke E.; Burns, Stephen J.; Sutherland, Michael R.; Pérez, Ventura R.; Faina, Peterson; McGee, David; Ranivoharimanana, Lovasoa (May 2019). "A new interpretation of Madagascar's megafaunal decline: The "Subsistence Shift Hypothesis"". Journal of Human Evolution. 130: 126–140. Bibcode:2019JHumE.130..126G. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2019.03.002. PMID 31010539. S2CID 128362254.
316. ^ Hixon, Sean W.; Douglass, Kristina G.; Crowley, Brooke E.; Rakotozafy, Lucien Marie Aimé; Clark, Geoffrey; Anderson, Atholl; Haberle, Simon; Ranaivoarisoa, Jean Freddy; Buckley, Michael; Fidiarisoa, Salomon; Mbola, Balzac; Kennett, Douglas J. (21 July 2021). "Late Holocene spread of pastoralism coincides with endemic megafaunal extinction on Madagascar". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 288 (1955): 1–10. doi:10.1098/rspb.2021.1204. PMC 8292765. PMID 34284627.
317. ^ Hixon, Sean W.; Domic, Alejandra I.; Douglass, Kristina G.; Roberts, Patrick; Eccles, Laurie; Buckley, Michael; Ivory, Sarah; Noe, Sarah; Kennett, Douglas J. (22 November 2022). "Cutmarked bone of drought-tolerant extinct megafauna deposited with traces of fire, human foraging, and introduced animals in SW Madagascar". Scientific Reports. 12 (1): 18504. Bibcode:2022NatSR..1218504H. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-22980-w. PMC 9681754. PMID 36414654.
318. Reinhardt, Antonia L.; Kasper, Thomas; Lochner, Maximilian; Bliedtner, Marcel; Krahn, Kim J.; Haberzettl, Torsten; Shumilovskikh, Lyudmila; Rahobisoa, Jean-Jacques; Zech, Roland; Favier, Charly; Behling, Hermann; Bremond, Laurent; Daut, Gerhard; Montade, Vincent (4 February 2022). "Rain Forest Fragmentation and Environmental Dynamics on Nosy Be Island (NW Madagascar) at 1300 cal BP Is Attributable to Intensified Human Impact". Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 9: 1–21. doi:10.3389/fevo.2021.783770. ISSN 2296-701X.
319. Holdaway, Simon J.; Emmitt, Joshua; Furey, Louise; Jorgensen, Alex; O'Regan, Gerard; Phillipps, Rebecca; Prebble, Matthew; Wallace, Roderick; Ladefoged, Thegn N. (18 November 2018). "Māori settlement of New Zealand: The Anthropocene as a process". Archaeology in Oceania. 54 (1): 17–34. doi:10.1002/arco.5173. ISSN 0728-4896. Retrieved 3 July 2024 – via Wiley Online Library.
320. Mcglone, M.S. (1989). "The Polynesian Settlement of New Zealand in Relation to Environmental and Biotic Changes". New Zealand Journal of Ecology. 12: 115–129. ISSN 0110-6465. JSTOR 24053254. Retrieved 3 July 2024 – via JSTOR.
321. ^ Kolbert, Elizabeth (2014-12-22). "The Big Kill". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-02-25.
322. Allentoft, Morten Erik; Heller, Rasmus; Oskam, Charlotte L.; Lorenzen, Eline D.; Hale, Marie L.; Gilbert, M. Thomas P.; Jacomb, Christopher; Holdaway, Richard N.; Bunce, Michael (17 March 2014). "Extinct New Zealand megafauna were not in decline before human colonization". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 111 (13): 4922–4927. Bibcode:2014PNAS..111.4922A. doi:10.1073/pnas.1314972111. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3977255. PMID 24639531.
323. Holdaway, Richard N.; Allentoft, Morten E.; Jacomb, Christopher; Oskam, Charlotte L.; Beavan, Nancy R.; Bunce, Michael (7 November 2014). "An extremely low-density human population exterminated New Zealand moa". Nature Communications. 5 (1): 5436. Bibcode:2014NatCo...5.5436H. doi:10.1038/ncomms6436. ISSN 2041-1723. PMID 25378020. Archived from the original on 3 September 2021. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
324. Lafferty, Kevin D.; Hopkins, Skylar R. (13 February 2018). "Unique parasite aDNA in moa coprolites from New Zealand suggests mass parasite extinctions followed human-induced megafauna extinctions". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 115 (7): 1411–1413. Bibcode:2018PNAS..115.1411L. doi:10.1073/pnas.1722598115. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5816219. PMID 29440435.
325. Crist, Eileen; Ripple, William J.; Ehrlich, Paul R.; Rees, William E.; Wolf, Christopher (2022). "Scientists' warning on population" (PDF). Science of the Total Environment. 845: 157166. Bibcode:2022ScTEn.84557166C. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157166. PMID 35803428. S2CID 250387801. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-11-12. Retrieved 2022-11-08.
326. Beebee, Trevor (2022). Impacts of Human Population on Wildlife: A British Perspective. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1108833554.
327. Brashares, Justin S.; Arcese, Peter; Sam, Moses K. (2001). "Human demography and reserve size predict wildlife extinction in West Africa". Proceedings: Biological Sciences. 268 (1484): 2473–2478. doi:10.1098/rspb.2001.1815. JSTOR 3067753. PMC 1088902. PMID 11747566.
328. "Attenborough: 'Curb excess capitalism' to save nature". BBC News. 8 October 2020. Archived from the original on 8 October 2020. Retrieved 8 November 2022.
329. Büscher B, Fletcher R, Brockington D, Sandbrook C, Adams W, Campbell L, Corson C, Dressler W, Duffy R, Gray N, Holmes G, Kelly A, Lunstrum E, Ramutsindela M, Shanker K (2017). "Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical ideas for conservation, and their implications". Oryx. 51 (3): 407–410. doi:10.1017/S0030605316001228. S2CID 56573294.
330. Marques, Alexandra; Martins, Inês S.; Kastner, Thomas; Plutzar, Christoph; Theurl, Michaela C.; Eisenmenger, Nina; Huijbregts, Mark A. J.; Wood, Richard; Stadler, Konstanin; Bruckner, Martin; Canelas, Joana; Hilbers, Jelle P.; Tukker, Arnold; Erb, Karlheinz; Pereira, Henrique M. (4 March 2019). "Increasing impacts of land use on biodiversity and carbon sequestration driven by population and economic growth". Nature Ecology & Evolution. 3 (4): 628–637. Bibcode:2019NatEE...3..628M. doi:10.1038/s41559-019-0824-3. PMC 6443044. PMID 30833755.
331. Kopina H, Washington H, Gray J, Taylor B (2018). "The "future of conservation" debate: defending ecocentrism and the Nature Needs Half movement". Biological Conservation. 217: 140–148. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2017.10.016. ISSN 0006-3207. S2CID 89930104.
332. Noss R, Dobson A, Baldwin R, Beier P, Davis C, Dellasala D, Francis J, Locke H, Nowak K, Lopez R, Reining C, Trombulak S, Tabor G (2012). "Bolder thinking for conservation". Conservation Biology. 26 (1): 1–4. Bibcode:2012ConBi..26....1N. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2011.01738.x. PMID 22280321. S2CID 44550790.
333. Weston, Phoebe (January 13, 2021). "Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruption". The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 13, 2021. Retrieved February 13, 2021.
334. O'Sullivan, Jane N. (June 2020). "The social and environmental influences of population growth rate and demographic pressure deserve greater attention in ecological economics". Ecological Economics. 172: 106648. Bibcode:2020EcoEc.17206648O. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106648. S2CID 216368140. Archived from the original on 6 January 2023. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
335. McKee, Jeffrey K.; Sciulli, Paul W.; Fooce, C. David; Waite, Thomas A. (January 2004). "Forecasting global biodiversity threats associated with human population growth". Biological Conservation. 115 (1): 161–164. Bibcode:2004BCons.115..161M. doi:10.1016/S0006-3207(03)00099-5. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
336. Crist, Eileen; Mora, Camilo; Engelman, Robert (21 April 2017). "The interaction of human population, food production, and biodiversity protection". Science. 356 (6335): 260–264. Bibcode:2017Sci...356..260C. doi:10.1126/science.aal2011. PMID 28428391. S2CID 12770178. Retrieved 1 January 2023.
337. Dodson, Jenna C.; Dérer, Patrícia; Cafaro, Philip; Götmark, Frank (15 December 2020). "Population growth and climate change: Addressing the overlooked threat multiplier". Science of the Total Environment. 748: 141346. Bibcode:2020ScTEn.74841346D. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141346. PMID 33113687. S2CID 225035992. Archived from the original on 6 January 2023. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
338. Kopnina, Helen; Washington, Haydn (6 April 2016). "Discussing why population growth is still ignored or denied". Chinese Journal of Population Resources and Environment. 14 (2): 133–143. Bibcode:2016CJPRE..14..133K. doi:10.1080/10042857.2016.1149296. hdl:1887/44662. S2CID 155499197.
339. Baillie, Jonathan; Ya-Ping, Zhang (September 14, 2018). "Space for nature". Science. 361 (6407): 1051. Bibcode:2018Sci...361.1051B. doi:10.1126/science.aau1397. PMID 30213888.
340. Allan, James R.; Possingham, Hugh P.; Atkinson, Scott C.; Waldron, Anthony; et al. (2 June 2022). "The minimum land area requiring conservation attention to safeguard biodiversity". Science. 376 (6597): 1094–1101. Bibcode:2022Sci...376.1094A. doi:10.1126/science.abl9127. hdl:11573/1640006. PMID 35653463. S2CID 233423065.
341. Magramo, Kathleen (June 3, 2022). "More than 40% of Earth's land surface must be conserved to stop the biodiversity crisis, report warns". CNN. Archived from the original on June 8, 2022. Retrieved June 8, 2022.
342. Watts, Jonathan (November 3, 2018). "Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN". The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 27, 2021. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
343. Greenfield, Patrick (January 13, 2020). "UN draft plan sets 2030 target to avert Earth's sixth mass extinction". The Guardian. Archived from the original on February 24, 2021. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
344. Yeung, Jessie (January 14, 2020). "We have 10 years to save Earth's biodiversity as mass extinction caused by humans takes hold, UN warns". CNN. Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
345. Dickie, Gloria (September 15, 2020). "Global Biodiversity Is in Free Fall". Scientific American. Archived from the original on March 7, 2021. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
346. Larson, Christina; Borenstein, Seth (September 15, 2020). "World isn't meeting biodiversity goals, UN report finds". Associated Press. Archived from the original on January 11, 2021. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
347. Rounsevell M, Harfoot M, Harrison P, Newbold T, Gregory R, Mace G (June 12, 2020). "A biodiversity target based on species extinctions". Science. 368 (6496): 1193–1195. Bibcode:2020Sci...368.1193R. doi:10.1126/science.aba6592. PMID 32527821. S2CID 219585428. Archived from the original on October 30, 2020. Retrieved August 26, 2020 – via UCL Discovery.
348. "Fewer than 20 extinctions a year: does the world need a single target for biodiversity?". Editorial. Nature. 583 (7814): 7–8. June 30, 2020. Bibcode:2020Natur.583....7.. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-01936-y. PMID 32606472.
349. ^ Carrington, Damian (October 29, 2020). "Protecting nature is vital to escape 'era of pandemics' – report". The Guardian. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved November 28, 2020.
350. Mcelwee, Pamela (November 2, 2020). "COVID-19 and the biodiversity crisis". The Hill. Archived from the original on May 15, 2022. Retrieved November 28, 2020.
351. "Escaping the 'Era of Pandemics': Experts Warn Worse Crises to Come Options Offered to Reduce Risk". Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. 2020. Archived from the original on January 26, 2024. Retrieved November 28, 2020.
352. Einhorn, Catrin (December 19, 2022). "Nearly Every Country Signs On to a Sweeping Deal to Protect Nature". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 19, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2023. The United States is just one of two countries in the world that are not party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, largely because Republicans, who are typically opposed to joining treaties, have blocked United States membership. That means the American delegation was required to participate from the sidelines. (The only other country that has not joined the treaty is the Holy See.)
353. ^ Paddison, Laura (December 19, 2022). "More than 190 countries sign landmark agreement to halt the biodiversity crisis". CNN. Archived from the original on December 20, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
354. Curry, Tierra (December 24, 2022). "COP15 biodiversity summit: Paving the road to extinction with good intentions". The Hill. Archived from the original on December 27, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2023.

Further reading

• Ceballos, Gerardo; Ehrlich, Anne H.; Ehrlich, Paul R. (2015). The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-1421417189. Archived from the original on 2017-04-09. Retrieved 2017-04-09.
• deBuys, William (March 2015). "The Politics of Extinction – A Global War on Nature". Tom Dispatch. Archived from the original on 2015-09-03. Retrieved 2015-03-15. Uncounted species – not just tigers, gibbons, rhinos, and saola, but vast numbers of smaller mammals, amphibians, birds, and reptiles – are being pressed to the brink. We've hardly met them and yet, within the vastness of the universe, they and the rest of Earth's biota are our only known companions. Without them, our loneliness would stretch to infinity.
• Firestone RB, West A, Kennett JP, Becker L, Bunch TE, Revay ZS, et al. (October 2007). "Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 104 (41): 16016–16021. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10416016F. doi:10.1073/pnas.0706977104. PMC 1994902. PMID 17901202.
• Hughes, Emma C.; Edwards, David P.; Thomas, Gavin H. (2022). "The homogenization of avian morphological and phylogenetic diversity under the global extinction crisis". Current Biology. 32 (17): 3830–3837.e3. Bibcode:2022CBio...32E3830H. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2022.06.018. PMC 9616725. PMID 35868322. S2CID 247827456.
• Kolbert, Elizabeth (May 25, 2009). "The Sixth Extinction? There have been five great die-offs in history. This time, the cataclysm is us". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 27 April 2012. Retrieved 8 May 2012.
• Leakey, Richard; Lewin, Roger (1996). The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind. New York: Anchor Books. ISBN 978-0-385-46809-1.
• Lees, Alexander C.; Attwood, Simon; et al. (2020). "Biodiversity scientists must fight the creeping rise of extinction denial". Nature Ecology and Evolution. 4 (11): 1440–1443. Bibcode:2020NatEE...4.1440L. doi:10.1038/s41559-020-01285-z. PMID 32811999. S2CID 221167551.
• Loarie, Scott R.; Duffy, Philip B.; Hamilton, Healy; Asner, Gregory P.; Field, Christopher B.; Ackerly, David D. (2009). "The velocity of climate change". Nature. 462 (7276): 1052–1055. Bibcode:2009Natur.462.1052L. doi:10.1038/nature08649. PMID 20033047. S2CID 4419902.
• Marsh, Bill (1 June 2012). "Are We in the Midst Of a Sixth Mass Extinction?". The New York Times Sunday Review: Opinion Page. Archived from the original on 31 December 2012. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
• Martin, P. S.; Wright, H. E. Jr, eds. (1967). Pleistocene Extinctions: The Search for a Cause. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-00755-8.
• McCallum, Malcolm L. (2015). "Vertebrate biodiversity losses point to sixth mass extinction". Biodiversity and Conservation. 24 (10): 2497–2519. Bibcode:2015BiCon..24.2497M. doi:10.1007/s10531-015-0940-6. S2CID 16845698.
• Newman, Lenore (2019). Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food. ECW Press. ISBN 978-1770414358.
• Nihjuis, Michelle (23 July 2012). "Conservationists Use Triage to Determine Which Species to Save and Not". Scientific American.
• Oakes, Ted (2003). Land of Lost Monsters: Man Against Beast – The Prehistoric Battle for the Planet. Hylas Publishing. ISBN 978-1-59258-005-7.
• Thomas, Chris D. (2017). Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1610397278.
• Wiens, John J. (December 2016). "Climate-Related Local Extinctions Are Already Widespread among Plant and Animal Species". PLOS Biology. 14 (12): e2001104. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2001104. hdl:10150/622757. PMC 5147797. PMID 27930674.

External links

External videos
Are We Living in the Sixth Extinction? on YouTube
We need IMMEDIATE action to stop extinction crisis, David Attenborough – BBC on YouTube
Earth currently experiencing a sixth mass extinction, according to scientists on YouTube

• The Extinction Crisis Archived 2019-09-03 at the Wayback Machine. Center for Biological Diversity.
• Vanishing: The extinction crisis is far worse than you think Archived 2019-09-04 at the Wayback Machine. CNN. December 2016.
• Biologists say half of all species could be extinct by end of century Archived 2020-01-15 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 25 February 2017
• Humans are ushering in the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, scientists warn Archived 2019-09-04 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 31 May 2017
• Human activity pushing Earth towards 'sixth mass species extinction,' report warns Archived 2019-08-25 at the Wayback Machine. CBC. Mar 26, 2018
• 'Terror being waged on wildlife', leaders warn Archived 2019-08-23 at the Wayback Machine. The Guardian. October 4, 2018.
• Earth Is on the Cusp of the Sixth Mass Extinction. Here's What Paleontologists Want You to Know Archived 2020-12-04 at the Wayback Machine. Discover. December 3, 2020.
• What the Extinction Crisis Took From the World in 2022 Archived 2022-12-28 at the Wayback Machine. The Nation. December 22, 2022.
• Extinction crisis puts 1 million species on the brink Archived 2023-01-05 at the Wayback Machine. Reuters. December 23, 2022.
• Exclusive: Huge chunk of plants, animals in U.S. at risk of extinction Archived 2023-02-15 at the Wayback Machine. Reuters. February 6, 2023.

v t e Extinction
Phenomena	Background extinction rate Coextinction De-extinction Ecological extinction Extinct in the wild Functional extinction Genetic pollution Lazarus taxon Local extinction Pseudoextinction
Models	Extinction vortex
Causes	Climate variability and change Genetic erosion Invasive species Habitat destruction Human impact on the environment Muller's ratchet Mutational meltdown Overabundant species Overexploitation Overshoot Paradox of enrichment
Theories and concepts	Extinction debt Extinction risk from climate change Extinction threshold Quasi-extinction Field of Bullets Hypothetical species Latent extinction risk Living fossil
Extinction events	Major Ordovician–Silurian Late Devonian Permian–Triassic Triassic–Jurassic Cretaceous–Paleogene Holocene Timeline Other Great Oxidation End-Ediacaran End-Botomian Dresbachian Cambrian–Ordovician Ireviken Mulde Lau Carboniferous Olson's End-Capitanian Carnian Pluvial Toarcian End-Jurassic or Tithonian Aptian Cenomanian-Turonian Eocene–Oligocene Middle Miocene Pliocene–Pleistocene Quaternary
Extinct species	Lists of extinct species IUCN Red List extinct species
Organizations	International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN Species Survival Commission Extinction Rebellion Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
See also	Anthropocene Decline in amphibian populations Decline in insect populations Extinction symbol Human extinction The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Category Commons

• Holocene extinctions
• Species made extinct by human activities
• Extinction
• Holocene
• Holocene life
• Environmental impact by effect
• Human ecology
• Human impact on the environment
• Anthropocene
• Extinction events