Refs for BD CHI project

[Melsteroni]

From Ben:

I wanted to share paper published yesterday in PloS Biology that might interest you. The paper was led by James Allan based at the University of Queensland, but involved colleagues from many institutions including University of Northern British Colombia, CSIRO, The Nature Conservancy and the Wildife Conservation Society.

We mapped the extent of threats (e.g. hunting, land conversion) within the ranges of over 5000 threatened species. We only mapped a threat in a species range if the species is specifically known to be sensitive to it.

We discovered a quarter of those species assessed are impacted by threats covering > 90 per cent of their range, and 395 species are impacted by threats across their entire distribution. These species will decline, and possibly die out in the impacted parts of their ranges without targeted conservation action. Completely impacted species will almost certainly face extinction if no interventions occur.

We also showcase the first global map of human impacts on threatened species (by combining the above data), identifying 'hotspots' (areas where many species face many threats), and 'coolspots' (where many threatened species are present but are not impacted by threats) – these refuges are the last places species are safe from human activities and are priorities for proactive conservation efforts.

Some slides are attached with key figures along with paper itself. Please feel free to share within your networks or tweet.

The link to the paper is here: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000158

we wrote an op for the The Conversation that summarises it is here: https://theconversation.com/guns-snares-and-bulldozers-new-map-reveals-hotspots-for-harm-to-wildlife-113361