Guns, snares and bulldozers: Map reveals danger zones for wildlife
Researchers found a quarter of more than 5,000 threatened species have almost nowhere left to go to escape from the threats posed by human development
The biggest killers of wildlife globally are unsustainable hunting and harvesting, and the conversion of huge swathes of natural habitat into farms, housing estates, roads and other industrial activities. There is little doubt that these threats are driving the current mass-extinction crisis. Yet the understanding of where these threats overlap with the locations of sensitive species has been poor. This limits the ability to target conservation efforts to the most important places. In a new study, published earlier in March in Plos Biology, 15 of the most harmful human threats were mapped — including hunting and land clearing — within the locations of 5,457 threatened mammals, birds and amphibians globally. It was found that 1,237 species — a quarter of those assessed — are affected by threats that cover more than 90% of their distributions. These species include many large, charismatic mammals such as lions and elephants. Most concerningly of all, 395 species were identified that a...
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