Extinction & Biodiversity
Today's extinction rate is estimated to be about 100 times this comparison rate.
What is the background extinction rate?
This is considered the greatest direct threat to wild species.
What is habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation?
This international agreement regulates trade in endangered wild animals and plants and has been formally signed by 181 countries.
What is CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora?
This kind of forest can grow naturally after a forest has been cleared.
What is a second-growth forest?
Returning a damaged habitat or ecosystem as close as possible to its natural condition is called this.
What is restoration?
A species with so few individuals that it could soon disappear is described by this conservation status.
What is endangered?
The loss of habitat in this biome creates especially serious threats to wild species and ecosystem services.
What is the tropical rainforest?
This conservation arrangement can make it financially attractive for a country to protect tropical forests and other ecosystems in exchange for reducing debt.
What are debt-for-nature swaps?
This logging method removes selected mature or intermediate-aged trees individually or in small groups.
What is selective cutting?
This is the first step in an ecosystem approach to sustaining terrestrial biodiversity.
What is mapping and inventorying ecosystems?
The rapid growth of the human population since the Industrial Revolution has occurred alongside an increase in this outcome for wild species.
What is an increase in wild species extinctions?
This threat occurs when humans harvest or capture wild species faster than populations can recover; illegal pet trade is one example.
What is overexploitation?
These protected areas can set aside land for wildlife, but oil drilling is allowed on some of them.
What are national wildlife refuges?
These strips of vegetation along streams and rivers can be damaged or destroyed by overgrazing.
What are riparian zones?
These designated ocean areas can show significant fish-population improvement in as little as two to four years.
What are marine reserves?
The most recent of Earth’s major mass extinctions occurred about this long ago.
What is about 65 million years ago?
In the United States, more than 40% of endangered species are at risk from these nonnative organisms that can harm native species.
What are invasive species?
A challenge for captive-breeding programs is that they cannot always prevent this decline in the variety of inherited traits.
What is loss of genetic diversity?
In the typical cycle of deforestation, this is often built deep into forests at the beginning, opening the way for further development.
What is construction of logging roads?
When wolves disappeared from Yellowstone, this predator’s population grew significantly.
What are coyotes?
One prediction about a possible sixth mass extinction is that it could eliminate as much as this share of Earth’s plant and animal species.
What is half?
DDT harmed predatory birds by causing this change to their eggs.
What is thinning eggshells?
These designated areas around protected lands can let local people use natural resources sustainably while helping protect the wild areas.
What are buffer zones?
This ecosystem service is not typically provided by grasslands: filtering soil pollutants, forming soil, supporting biodiversity, limiting erosion, or storing atmospheric carbon.
What is filtration of soil pollutants?
These remaining pockets of biodiversity lie within ecosystems that are otherwise highly degraded.
What are life raft ecosystems?