A new examination provides an in-depth examination of the adverse effects of human activities in the neotropical region of the Americas for more than 500 years.
The study, published on 15 September in Nature Scientific Reports, found that more than 56% of species in mammalian groups, or groups of coexisting species, living in the Neotropics, have become extinct since 1500, around when European colonization began. were observed in ungulate species, such as tapir (Tapirus terrestris) and white-liped peccary (Tayassu pecari).
Humans are largely guilty of this significant loss of wildlife, or discard, according to the study, with exaggerated hunting, habitat loss, arson and the advent of invasive species and diseases, all of them play a role.
While wildlife and habitat have declined since the 16th century, losses have become even more pronounced over the past 50 years, according to co-author Carlos Peres, professor of tropical conservation ecology at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK.
“We had a wonderful hike in habitat loss, which more or less coincides with the first primary road that reaches the Amazon from the rest of Brazil,” Peres told Mongabay. “As you know, the Amazon moved away from the rest of Brazil until 1971, so this is a great milestone in terms of tropical deforestation. “
TheArray, led by researchers from the UEA and the University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil, used animal inventories at 1,029 neotropical sites in 23 countries, from Mexico to Chile and Argentina, most of which have been published in the last 30 to 40 years. , however, knowledge dates back to the time of European colonization.
What the researchers eventually discovered is that anthropogenic pressures, such as habitat loss and over-hunting, were the main cause of local species extinction and “relief in the length of associations,” which refers to relief in the length of the frame inside. of each set of mammals.
“Any species that is removed from a meeting will open up an ecological area and therefore a failure in the functioning of the ecosystem,” lead writer Juliano Bogoni, a postdoctoral researcher at UEA, said in an email. “For example, the loss of a giant frugivorous species will compromise the seed dispersal process, forest regeneration, and adjustments to plant demographic dynamics (i. e. the dynamics of forest composition and tree dominance). contributing to the failure of the reservoirArray of diseases With the extinction of local species, the ecosystem also loses its genetic variability and ecological roles (i. e. functional diversity). »
Peres, who has been researching subsistence hunting and advertising in the U. S. tropics for 40 years, said the effects surprised him.
“I’ve been to more places in the Brazilian Amazon, to do wildlife studies than any other biologist who’s ever lived, whether people were alive or dead,” Peres said. “But I’m used to seeing places where they are only very giant Species are lost What our article shows is that there are many local extinctions, even of species with a lot of body.
Researchers say they hope this study can help identify conservation efforts in the Neotropics, i. e. in the Amazon region and Pantanal wetlands, which are still considered “intact wildlife. “On the contrary, regions such as the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and the Caatinga have degraded so much that they are now considered “empty ecosystems”, according to the study.
Bogoni argues that long-term conservation efforts deserve to come with “effective implementation and enforcement of the law in existing areas, and relief from political tension to dismantle or reduce the extent of those areas. “In addition, he says that the measures will have to be to take measures to prevent illegal hunting, deforestation and man-made fires.
While conservation paints can help protect intact biomes in the Amazon and Pantanal regions, fires that have been burning lately in those spaces would have a devastating effect on wildlife and their habitats, Peres said. The Pantanal region is particularly affected because it is “not destined to burn,” he said.
“The Pantanal has not burned well for many, many years,” Peres said. “So there’s a lot of biomass, a lot of fuel to burn. What other people report is . . . a lot of corpses and massive mortality rates. ” The fires in the pantanal are very serious . . . and they’re not done yet. We talk about rain next week, but we don’t know if the rains will come. “
While the effects make it transparent that humans have contributed to the widespread defamation of the neotropics, the article ends with a call to action and gives a nugget of hope.
“Hominids and other mammals have co-existed since the first Paleolithic hunters who wielded stone equipment about 3 or four million years ago,” the authors write. “On this long-term timeline, biodiversity losses have recently accelerated at breakneck speeds since the trade revolution. Let us make sure that the maximum of this impoverishment is overdue rather than early; otherwise, the prospects for neotropical mammals will seem increasingly bleak. “
Bogoni, J. A. , Peres, C. A. and Ferraz, K. M. (2020). The scope, intensity and points of mammalian discard: continental-scale research in neotropics, scientific reports, 10 (1) . doi: 10. 1038 / s41598-020-72010-w
Image foot The banner: A jaguar swimming Image through Tambako The Jaguar / Flickr.
Elizabeth Claire Alberts is editor of Mongabay. Follow her on Twitter @ECAlberts.
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