Conservation International charts biodiversity hotspots
Nine new biodiversity hotspots are added to list of high priority conservation targets
Earth Share organization Conservation International (CI) has added nine new regions to its list of biodiversity hotspots, raising the number of highest priority conservation targets from 25 to 34. What are these hotspots, and why has CI increased their number?
In recent decades, much of the natural world has been under assault on an unprecedented scale. Mighty rivers are being reduced to a trickle by ill-conceived dam projects. Animals are trapped, killed, and exported live to feed an insatiable trade in everything from bushmeat to exotic pets. Half of the world’s tropical rain forests, nature’s repository for the richest assemblages of terrestrial plant and animal species, have been plundered and razed.
Trying to save the world’s declining biodiversity isn’t easy. Tackling a problem of this scale and complexity, often with modest funds, means that conservationists must pinpoint these places where the greatest conservation gains can be made for each investment. This requires close study of many living things in a variety of habitats and biomes to determine which support the greatest number of unique plant and animal species and which are under the greatest threat. Of particular concern are those species that are endemic to a region—creatures found nowhere else on Earth and therefore irreplaceable if lost. CI has been doing exactly that, applying the best science to a concept developed by British ecologist Norman Myers 17 years ago.
Five years ago, CI released an updated list of biodiversity hotspots, identifying 25 places that needed the highest level of protection and focusing resources and science on these ecological crown jewels. It was arguably the greatest priority-setting effort for terrestrial conservation ever undertaken. Circling the globe from the Tropical Andes to the Mediterranean Basin to the temperate forests of New Zealand, these initial hotspots were tiny islands of remaining habitat where many of the planet’s most distinctive and most threatened species could be found.
Now, five years later and armed with new knowledge, CI has redrawn the boundaries of several hotspots, divided a few others, and added several critically important areas, resulting in a new list. The relentless exploitation and destruction of these places by human activities can be measured by the fact that the remaining intact portions of these 34 hotspots today cover only 2.3 percent of Earth’s land surface, a little larger than the Indian subcontinent. In the preindustrial era, the total area of the hotspots comprised 15.7 percent, about the size of Australia and the former USSR combined. Still, in the small area of remaining hotspot fragments, a remarkably high percentage of the world’s terrestrial species are found: No less than 50 percent of all plants and 42 percent of terrestrial vertebrates packed into the hotspots are endemics found nowhere else.
“It doesn’t mean that the job is done with the original 25 hotspots,” says Michael Hoffmann, a biodiversity analyst at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at CI. “It just means that we are learning that the job is bigger than we had originally anticipated.”
To qualify as a hotspot, a region must have lost at least 70 percent of its original vegetation due to the impact of human activities and hold at least 1,500 endemic plant species. Being restricted to one area, endemic species are more vulnerable to extinction than creatures that range more widely. Today, three out of four of the world’s Critically Endangered and Endangered terrestrial vertebrates are found only in hotspots.
“In addition to harboring unique species, hotspots are also home to deep evolutionary lineages,” explains Russell A. Mittermeier, President of CI. “The bottom line is that if we fail to conserve the hotspots, we will lose a large portion of Earth’s unique living creatures regardless of how successful we are everywhere else.”
Hotspots are akin to emergency rooms for threatened and disappearing life on Earth. Right now, Mittermeier warns, the Earth is facing a biodiversity crisis—one that will affect everyone, and one that everyone should join in the fight to overcome.
Related Links:
* Biodiversity Hotspots website
* Hotspots Revisited book
* Press Release: Biodiversity Hotspots Identify Conservation Priorities