The End of Doom (50 page)

somewhere between 75 and 80 percent:
Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley,
Look,
April 1970.

709 known species as having gone extinct:
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, accessed May 30, 2014.
www.iucnredlist.org/
.

322 species have become extinct:
Rodolfo Dirzo et al., “Defaunation in the Anthropocene.”
Science
345.6195 (July 25, 2014): 401–406.
www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6195/401
.

half the number of vertebrates:
Richard McLellan, ed.,
Living Planet Report 2014
. World Wildlife Fund, 2014.
wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/
.

108 species as having gone extinct:
Kieran Suckling, Rhiwena Slack, and Brian Nowicki, “Extinction and the Endangered Species Act.” Center for Biological Diversity, May 1, 2004.
www.biologicaldiversity.org/publications/papers/ExtinctAndESA.pdf
.

giant Palouse earthworm:
Doug Zimmer, “Giant Palouse Earthworm Not Warranted for ESA Protections.” Pacific Region News Release, US Fish and Wildlife Service, July 25, 2011,
www.fws.gov/pacific/news/news.cfm?id=2144374846
.

Some 178 mammal species:
Anthony Barnosky, PNAS, “Megafauna Biomass Tradeoff as a Driver of Quaternary and Future Extinctions.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
105, supp. 1 (August 12, 2008).
www.pnas.org/content/105/suppl.1/11543.full
.

after humans arrived in North America:
K. J. Willis and G. M. MacDonald, “Long-Term Ecological Records and Their Relevance to Climate Change Predictions for a Warmer World.”
Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution,
and Systematics
42 (August 23, 2011): 267–287.
www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-102209-144704
.

Polynesian wayfarers caused the extinction:
Jeremy Hance, “Humans Killed over 10 Percent of the World's Bird Species When They Colonized the Pacific Islands.”
Mongabay,
March 25, 2013.
news.mongabay.com/2013/0325-hance-bird-extinction-pacific.html
.

“extinctions caused by habitat loss”:
Fangliang He and Stephen P. Hubbell, “Species-Area Relationships Always Overestimate Extinction Rates from Habitat Loss.”
Nature
473 (May 19, 2011): 368–371.
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7347/full/nature09985.html
.

“Models project that the risk”:
IPCC,
Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
, Chapter 4: “Terrestrial and Inland Water Systems,” March 31, 2014, 153.
ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap4_FGDall.pdf
.

protected areas have nearly doubled:
World Bank, World Development Indicators: Deforestation and Biodiversity,
accessed June 3, 2014,
wdi.worldbank.org/table/3.4
.

what is happening to marine biodiversity:
Douglas J. McCauley et al., “Marine Defaunation: Animal Loss in the Global Ocean.”
Science
347.6219 (January 16, 2015).
www.sciencepubs.org/content/347/6219/1255641.abstract
.

populations of large open ocean predators:
Jeremy B. C. Jackson, “Ecological Extinction and Evolution in the Brave New Ocean,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
105, supp. 1 (August 12, 2008): 11458–11465.
www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11458.full
.

“halts, and even reverses”:
Christopher Costello, Steven D. Gaines, and John Lynham, “Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse?”
Science
321.5896 (September 19, 2008): 1678–1681.
www.sciencemag.org/content/321/5896/1678.short
.

“The city is the most environmentally benign form”:
Stewart Brand, citing Peter Calthorpe in “How Slums Can Save the Planet.”
Prospect,
January 27, 2010.
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/how-slums-can-save-the-planet/#.U7sUp6goxyg
.

a globally interconnected world:
Paolo D'Odorico et al., “Feeding Humanity Through Global Food Trade.”
Earth's Future
2.9 (September 2014): 458–469.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014EF000250/abstract
.

“we will need to find a way to reintegrate”:
Jeremy Rifkin, “The Risks of Too Much City.”
Washington Post,
December 17, 2006.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/15/AR2006121501647.html
.

“We believe that projecting conservative values”:
Jesse H. Ausubel, Iddo K. Wernick, and Paul E. Waggoner, “Peak Farmland and the Prospect for Land Sparing.”
Population Development Review
38, supplement 1 (February 2013): 221–242.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2013.00561.x/pdf
.

“among 50 nations with extensive forests”:
Pekka E. Kauppi et al., “Returning Forests Analyzed with the Forest Identity.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
103.46 (November 13, 2006): 17574–17579.
www.pnas.org/content/103/46/17574.short
.

In 2014
:
Remi D'Annunzio, Erik J. Lindquist, and Kenneth G. MacDicken, “Global forest land-use change from 1990 to 2010: an update to a global remote sensing survey of forests,” FAO, 2014,
www.lafranceagricole.fr/var/gfa/storage/fichiers-pdf/Docs/2014/forest-FAO.pdf
.

A February 2015 study:
Do-Hyung Kim, Joseph O. Sexton, John R. Townshend, “Accelerated Deforestation in the Humid Tropics from 1990s to the 2000s,” Geophysical Research Letters, February 11, 2015,
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/2014GL062777/?campaign=wlytk-41855.5282060185
.

secondary forests in tropical Africa, America, and Asia:
Food and Agriculture Organization,
The State of the World's Forests 2005
. United Nations, 2005.
www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5574e/y5574e00.htm
.

“doubtful that more than 10% of the tropical forests”:
R. Dirzo and P. H. Raven, “Global State of Biodiversity and Loss.”
Annual Review of Environment and Resources
28 (November 2003): 137–167.

current forest trends suggest:
Joseph Wright, “The Future of Tropical Forests,”
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
Vol. 1195:
The Year in Ecology and Conservation Biology,
2010, 27.

“The increase in secondary forest”:
Eldredge Bermingham, “Will Tropical Species Survive?”
Biological Conservation Newsletter,
Smithsonian Natural History Museum, February 2009.
botany.si.edu/pubs/bcn/issue/pdf/bcn290.pdf
.

“Surprisingly, few species”:
Louise Gray, citing Nigel Stork in “Extinction of Millions of Species ‘Greatly Exaggerated.'”
Telegraph,
January 23, 2013.
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9824723/Extinction-of-millions-of-species-greatly-exaggerated.html
; see also Mark J. Costello, Robert M. May, and Nigel E. Stork, “Can We Name Earth's Species Before They Go Extinct?”
Science
339.6118 (January 25, 2013): 413–416.
bug.tamu.edu/entocourses/ento601/pdf/Costello_et_al_2013.pdf
.

farmland and secondary forests are not:
C. H. Mendenhall et al., “Predicting Biodiversity Change and Averting Collapse in Agricultural Landscapes.”
Nature
509 (May 8, 2014): 213–217.
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7499/full/nature13139.html
.

“almost one-half of the common bat species”:
Marty Downs, “Island Biogeography Theory Misses Mark for Tropical Forest Remnants,” Nature Conservancy blog, April 16, 2014.
blog.nature.org/science/2014/04/16/island-biogeography-theory-forest-remnants/
.

a theory of “countryside biogeography”:
Henrique M. Pereira and Gretchen C. Daily, “Modeling Biodiversity Dynamics in Countryside Landscapes.”
Ecology
87.8 (August 2006): 1877–1885.
www.azoresbioportal.angra.uac.pt/files/publicacoes_PEREIRA06_BiodiversityCountryside.pdf.pdf
.

“Nature is almost everywhere”:
Emma Marris,
Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World
. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011, 224.

anthromes are mosaics of land:
Michael P. Perring and Erle C. Ellis, Chapter 8, “The Extent of Novel Ecosystems: Long in Time and Broad in Space,” in
Novel Ecosystems: Intervening in the New Ecological World Order,
Richard J. Hobbs, Eric S. Higgs, and Carol M. Hall, eds. New York: Wiley, 2013, 66–80.
ecotope.org/people/ellis/papers/perring_2013.pdf
.

Earth is an extensively modified used planet:
Erle C. Ellis et al., “Used Planet: A Global History,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
110.20 (May 14, 2013): 7978–7985.
ecotope.org/people/ellis/papers/ellis_2013b.pdf
.

“Imagine that an alien scientist”:
James H. Brown and Dov F. Sax, “Biological Invasions and Scientific Objectivity: Reply to Cassey et al.”
Austral Ecology
30 (June 2005): 481–483.
www.brown.edu/Research/Sax_Research_Lab/Documents/PDFs/Biological%20invasions.pdf
.

“biologists cannot tell by observation”:
Mark Sagoff, “What Does Environmental Protection Protect?”
Ethics, Policy and Enviroment
16.3 (December 2, 2013): 239–257.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2013.843362#U59TQShWj_Y
.

directional and deterministic process of succession:
Steward T. A. Pickett and J. M. Grove, “Urban Ecosystems: What Would Tansley Do?”
Urban Ecosystems
12 (January 20, 2009): 1–8.

“theory of the climax state”:
Robert Nelson, “Ecological Science as a Creation Story.”
Independent Review,
Spring 2010, 513–534.

stable interdependent communities as the norm:
Dr. Arthur Shapiro, “Composition of Ecological Communities Is Dynamic.” Commonwealth Club lecture, May 8, 2014.
milliontrees.me/2014/05/08/dr-arthur-shapiro-composition-of-ecological-communities-is-dynamic/
.

“ecologists have come to understand the reality”:
John Kricher, “Nothing Endures but Change: Ecology's Newly Emerging Paradigm.”
Northeastern Naturalist
5.2 (1998): 165–174.
biophilosophy.ca/Teaching/2070papers/kricher.pdf
.

Ecological fitting is the process:
Salvatore J. Agosta and Jeffrey A. Klemens, “Ecological Fitting by Phenotypically Flexible Genotypes: Implications for Species Associations, Community Assembly and Evolution.”
Ecology Letters
11.11 (November 2008): 1123–1134.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01237.x/abstract;jsessionid=A431ABA8A6A229AFA3B54DE9747AD57D.f01t01
.

Species don't need to coevolve:
David M. Wilkinson, “The Parable of Green Mountain: Ascension Island, Ecosystem Construction and Ecological Fitting.”
Journal of Biogeography
31 (January 2004): 1–4.
www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/biedwilk/pdfs/greenmt.pdf
.

“the popular view [is] that diversity”:
Dov F. Sax and Steven D. Gaines, “Species Diversity: From Global Decreases to Local Increases.”
Trends in Ecology and Evolution
18.11 (November 2003): 561–566.
planet.uwc.ac.za/nisl/Invasives/Refs/SaxandGaines.pdf
.

“North America presently has more”:
James H. Brown and Dov F. Sax et al., “Aliens Among Us.”
Conservation,
July 29, 2008.
conservationmagazine.org/2008/07/aliens-among-us/
.

analyzed a massive data set:
Maria Dornelas et al., “Assemblage Time Series Reveal Biodiversity Change but Not Systematic Loss.”
Science
344.6181 (April 18, 2014): 296–299.
www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6181/296.short
.

New Zealand's 2,000 native plant species:
Dov F. Sax, Steven D. Gaines, and James H. Brown, “Species Invasions Exceed Extinctions on Islands Worldwide: A Comparative Study of Plants and Birds.”
The American Naturalist,
December 2002, 766–783.
labs.bio.unc.edu/Peet/courses/bio255_2003f/papers/Sax2002.pdf
.

In California, an additional 1,000 new species:
James H. Brown and Dov F. Sax, “An Essay on Some Topics Concerning Invasive Species.”
Austral Ecology
29 (2004): 530–536.
www.bio.fsu.edu/miller/docs/Brown_SAX.pdf
.

overall species richness of the plant life on Pacific islands:
Dov F. Sax and Steven D. Gaines, “Species Invasions and Extinction: The Future of Native Biodiversity on Islands.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Supplement 1, August 12, 2008, 11490–11497.
www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11490.short
.

introduced species of plants and animals:
Joan G. Ehrenfeld, “Ecosystem Consequences of Biological Invasions.”
Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics
41 (December 2010): 59–80.
izt.ciens.ucv.ve/ecologia/Archivos/ECO_POB%202010/ECOPO4_2010/Ehrenfeld%202010.pdf
.

“meta-analysis of over 1000 field studies”:
Barry W. Brook et al.,“Does the Terrestrial Biosphere Have Planetary Tipping Points?”
Trends in Ecology and Evolution,
July 2013, 396–401.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534713000335
.