The Great Simplification #25 – Gerardo Ceballos: “Will the Ongoing Population Extinctions Lead to a 6th Mass Extinction?”

Over the past few decades, awareness of the human impact on the natural world has increased. From climate change to vegetation loss, to pollution, the encroachment seems to be global. But most of these environmental impacts are still framed from the human sphere/perspective – still too few people are aware of the ongoing disappearance of the once-abundant and diverse wildlife that we share the planet with.

In this episode, we meet with ecologist and conservationist Dr. Gerardo Ceballos. Ceballos discusses animal populations, the sixth mass extinction, his new project, Creatures United, and how we can better care about and protect Earth’s remaining biodiversity.

About Gerardo Ceballos

Dr. Gerardo Ceballos is an ecologist and conservationist very well-known for his theoretical and empirical work on animal ecology and conservation. He is particularly recognized for his influential work on global patterns of distribution of diversity, endemism, and extinction risk in vertebrates. Ceballos was the first scientist to publish the distribution of a complete group of organisms (mammals). He is also well–known for his contribution to understanding the magnitude and impacts of the sixth mass extinction; he has shown that vertebrate species that became extinct in the last century would have taken more than 10 thousand years under the “normal” extinction rate.

Listen to the podcast here.