One million species risk extinction due to humans: draft UN report

Many experts think a so-called ‘mass extinction event’ — only the sixth in the last half-billion years — is already under way.

Delegates from 130 nations meeting in Paris from April 29 will vet the executive summary line-by-line. Wording may change, but figures lifted from the underlying report cannot be altered. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report warns of “an imminent rapid acceleration in the global rate of species extinction.”

The most recent saw the end of the Cretaceous period some 66 million years ago, when a 10km-wide asteroid strike wiped out most lifeforms. The direct causes of species loss, in order of importance, are shrinking habitat and land-use change, hunting for food or illicit trade in body parts, climate change, pollution, and alien species such as rats, mosquitoes and snakes that hitch rides on ships or planes, the report finds.

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