Extinctions in next 20 years may near 20th-century total

The loss of land-based animals is accelerating, researchers report.

Their analysis of thousands of vertebrate species reveals that extinction rates are likely much faster than previously thought.

The researchers call for immediate global action, such as a ban on the wildlife trade, to slow the sixth mass extinction.

“When humanity exterminates populations and species of other creatures, it is sawing off the limb on which it is sitting…”

In 2015, Paul Ehrlich cowrote a study declaring the world’s sixth mass extinction was underway. Five years later, Ehrlich, emeritus professor of population studies at Stanford University and an emeritus senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and his colleagues have a grim update. The extinction rate is likely much higher than previously thought and is eroding nature’s ability to provide vital services to people.

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