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Wildlife: Where Mammals No Longer Tread
Ever wonder where all the wild things are? Here's where some of the big ones aren't: on 80% of their former worldwide range, according to a new study published in the Journal of Mammalogy. And because big mammals affect their surroundings in equally large ways, the need to protect them is urgent, according to the researchers.
The study compared the current ranges of 263 land mammals weighing more than 44 pounds with their former ranges in the year 1500—a baseline selected because it was around this time that humans began to have significant impacts on nature through colonization and industrialization. They found that of these species, at least 35% have lost more than half of their historic range, and that less than 21% of the Earth's land surface still contains all the large mammals it once held.
"Perhaps the most striking result of our study is that those places that still retain the same roster of large mammals as in 1500 A.D. are either small, intensively managed reserves or places of extremes," says John Morrison, WWF's director of conservation measures and lead author of the study. "Remote areas are either too hot, dry, wet, frozen or swampy to support intensive human activities." These spots include parts of the Canadian Arctic, the Amazon Basin, Siberia and central Australia.
The species that have lost the most range include bison, wolves, cougars, jaguars, lions, African elephants, giraffes and African wild dogs.
The researchers note that both large carnivores and herbivores are important to ecosystems because these carnivores affect the number, distribution and behavior of their prey, while large herbivores function as ecological engineers, changing the structure and composition of vegetation.
"The good news is that since the year 1500, only seven large mammals have become extinct, providing many opportunities for active conservation of other imperiled species," says Morrison.
