Recreating 130,000 years of mammal food webs shows scope of biodiversity crisis Reconstructing ice age diets reveals unraveling web of life. In the last 50 years, 60% of animal populations have been pushed to extinction. Although already tragic, such losses also have profound impacts on the ecological integrity of biological systems. Research published this week in Science offers the clearest picture yet of the reverberating consequences of land mammal declines on food webs over the past 130,000 years. It’s not a pretty picture. “While about 6% of land mammals have gone extinct in that time, we estimate that more than 50% of mammal food web links have disappeared,” said ecologist Evan Fricke, lead author of the study. “And the mammals most likely to decline, both in the past...
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Rapid increases in the scope and effectiveness of global conservation efforts are critical to maintaining Earth’s ecological integrity New research published in the June 3, 2022 issue of journal Science reveals that 44 percent of Earth’s land area – some 64 million square kilometers (24.7 million square miles) requires conservation to safeguard biodiversity. The team, led by Dr James R. Allan from the University of Amsterdam, used advanced geospatial algorithms to map the optimal areas for conserving terrestrial species and ecosystems across the world. They further used spatially explicit land-use scenarios to quantify how much of this land is at risk from human activities by 2030. A drone view shows road traffic near Banco National Park in Abidjan, Ivory Coast May 16, 2022. REUT...
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