Using the IUCN Red List to map threats to terrestrial vertebrates at global scale
Abstract
The Anthropocene is characterized by unparalleled human impact on other species, potentially ushering in the sixth mass extinction. Yet mitigation efforts remain hampered by limited information on the spatial patterns and intensity of the threats driving global biodiversity loss. Here we use expert-derived information from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List on threats to 23,271 species, representing all terrestrial amphibians, birds and mammals, to generate global maps of the six major threats to these groups: agriculture, hunting and trapping, logging, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. Our results show that agriculture and logging are pervasive in the tropics and that hunting and trapping is the most geographically widespread threat to mammals and birds. Additionally, current representations of human pressure underestimate the overall pressure on biodiversity, due to the exclusion of threats such as hunting and climate change. Alarmingly, this is particularly the case in areas of the highest biodiversity importance.
Citation
Harfoot , M B J , Johnston , A , Balmford , A , Burgess , N D , Butchart , S H M , Dias , M P , Hazin , C , Hilton-Taylor , C , Hoffmann , M , Isaac , N J B , Iversen , L L , Outhwaite , C L , Visconti , P & Geldmann , J 2021 , ' Using the IUCN Red List to map threats to terrestrial vertebrates at global scale ' , Nature Ecology and Evolution , vol. 5 , no. 11 , pp. 1510-1519 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01542-9
Publication
Nature Ecology and Evolution
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2397-334XType
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
Funding: This work is supported by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative collaborative grants programme (all), the EU’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie action (grant no. 706784, J.G.), VILLUM FONDEN (grant no. VKR023371, J.G.), Independent Research Fund Denmark’s Sapere Aude (grant no. 0165-00018B, J.G.), UK Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund: Trade, Development and the Environment Hub project (grant no. ES/S008160/1, N.D.B and M.B.J.H) and the KR Foundation and Hempel Foundation (‘Designing a brighter future for biodiversity’, N.D.B. and M.B.J.H.)Collections
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