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Institution

International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources

NonprofitDhaka, Bangladesh
About: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources is a nonprofit organization based out in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Biodiversity. The organization has 1317 authors who have published 1870 publications receiving 97588 citations.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
28 May 2010-Science
TL;DR: Most indicators of the state of biodiversity showed declines, with no significant recent reductions in rate, whereas indicators of pressures on biodiversity showed increases, indicating that the Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2010 targets have not been met.
Abstract: In 2002, world leaders committed, through the Convention on Biological Diversity, to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. We compiled 31 indicators to report on progress toward this target. Most indicators of the state of biodiversity (covering species' population trends, extinction risk, habitat extent and condition, and community composition) showed declines, with no significant recent reductions in rate, whereas indicators of pressures on biodiversity (including resource consumption, invasive alien species, nitrogen pollution, overexploitation, and climate change impacts) showed increases. Despite some local successes and increasing responses (including extent and biodiversity coverage of protected areas, sustainable forest management, policy responses to invasive alien species, and biodiversity-related aid), the rate of biodiversity loss does not appear to be slowing.

3,993 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
30 May 2014-Science
TL;DR: The biodiversity of eukaryote species and their extinction rates, distributions, and protection is reviewed, and what the future rates of species extinction will be, how well protected areas will slow extinction Rates, and how the remaining gaps in knowledge might be filled are reviewed.
Abstract: Background A principal function of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is to “perform regular and timely assessments of knowledge on biodiversity.” In December 2013, its second plenary session approved a program to begin a global assessment in 2015. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and five other biodiversity-related conventions have adopted IPBES as their science-policy interface, so these assessments will be important in evaluating progress toward the CBD’s Aichi Targets of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020. As a contribution toward such assessment, we review the biodiversity of eukaryote species and their extinction rates, distributions, and protection. We document what we know, how it likely differs from what we do not, and how these differences affect biodiversity statistics. Interestingly, several targets explicitly mention “known species”—a strong, if implicit, statement of incomplete knowledge. We start by asking how many species are known and how many remain undescribed. We then consider by how much human actions inflate extinction rates. Much depends on where species are, because different biomes contain different numbers of species of different susceptibilities. Biomes also suffer different levels of damage and have unequal levels of protection. How extinction rates will change depends on how and where threats expand and whether greater protection counters them. Different visualizations of species biodiversity. ( A ) The distributions of 9927 bird species. ( B ) The 4964 species with smaller than the median geographical range size. ( C ) The 1308 species assessed as threatened with a high risk of extinction by BirdLife International for the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. ( D ) The 1080 threatened species with less than the median range size. (D) provides a strong geographical focus on where local conservation actions can have the greatest global impact. Additional biodiversity maps are available at www.biodiversitymapping.org. Advances Recent studies have clarified where the most vulnerable species live, where and how humanity changes the planet, and how this drives extinctions. These data are increasingly accessible, bringing greater transparency to science and governance. Taxonomic catalogs of plants, terrestrial vertebrates, freshwater fish, and some marine taxa are sufficient to assess their status and the limitations of our knowledge. Most species are undescribed, however. The species we know best have large geographical ranges and are often common within them. Most known species have small ranges, however, and such species are typically newer discoveries. The numbers of known species with very small ranges are increasing quickly, even in well-known taxa. They are geographically concentrated and are disproportionately likely to be threatened or already extinct. We expect unknown species to share these characteristics. Current rates of extinction are about 1000 times the background rate of extinction. These are higher than previously estimated and likely still underestimated. Future rates will depend on many factors and are poised to increase. Finally, although there has been rapid progress in developing protected areas, such efforts are not ecologically representative, nor do they optimally protect biodiversity. Outlook Progress on assessing biodiversity will emerge from continued expansion of the many recently created online databases, combining them with new global data sources on changing land and ocean use and with increasingly crowdsourced data on species’ distributions. Examples of practical conservation that follow from using combined data in Colombia and Brazil can be found at www.savingspecies.org and www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3zjeJW2NVk.

2,360 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Recent progress in understanding invasion impacts and management is highlighted, and the challenges that the discipline faces in its science and interactions with society are discussed.
Abstract: Study of the impacts of biological invasions, a pervasive component of global change, has generated remarkable understanding of the mechanisms and consequences of the spread of introduced populations. The growing field of invasion science, poised at a crossroads where ecology, social sciences, resource management, and public perception meet, is increasingly exposed to critical scrutiny from several perspectives. Although the rate of biological invasions, elucidation of their consequences, and knowledge about mitigation are growing rapidly, the very need for invasion science is disputed. Here, we highlight recent progress in understanding invasion impacts and management, and discuss the challenges that the discipline faces in its science and interactions with society.

2,346 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results suggest that the Eastern Arc and Coastal Forests of Tanzania-Kenya, Philippines, and Polynesia-Micronesia can least afford to lose more habitat and that, if current deforestation rates continue, the Caribbean, Tropical Andes, Philippines and Me- soamerica, Sundaland, Indo-Burma, Madagascar, and Choco-Darien-Western Ecuador will lose the most habitat in the near future.
Abstract: Nearly half the world's vascular plant species and one-third of terrestrial vertebrates are endemic to 25 "hotspots" of biodiversity, each of which has at least 1500 endemic plant species. None of these hotspots have more than one-third of their pristine habitat remaining. Historically, they covered 12% of the land's sur- face, but today their intact habitat covers only 1.4% of the land. As a result of this habitat loss, we expect many of the hotspot endemics to have either become extinct or—because much of the habitat loss is recent— to be threatened with extinction. We used World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red Lists to test this expectation. Overall, between one-half and two-thirds of all threatened plants and 57% of all threatened terrestrial verte- brates are hotspot endemics. For birds and mammals, in general, predictions of extinction in the hotspots based on habitat loss match numbers of species independently judged extinct or threatened. In two classes of hotspots the match is not as close. On oceanic islands, habitat loss underestimates extinction because intro- duced species have driven extinctions beyond those caused by habitat loss on these islands. In large hotspots, conversely, habitat loss overestimates extinction, suggesting scale dependence (this effect is also apparent for plants). For reptiles, amphibians, and plants, many fewer hotspot endemics are considered threatened or ex- tinct than we would expect based on habitat loss. This mismatch is small in temperate hotspots, however, sug- gesting that many threatened endemic species in the poorly known tropical hotspots have yet to be included on the IUCN Red Lists. We then asked in which hotspots the consequences of further habitat loss (either abso- lute or given current rates of deforestation) would be most serious. Our results suggest that the Eastern Arc and Coastal Forests of Tanzania-Kenya, Philippines, and Polynesia-Micronesia can least afford to lose more habitat and that, if current deforestation rates continue, the Caribbean, Tropical Andes, Philippines, Me- soamerica, Sundaland, Indo-Burma, Madagascar, and Choco-Darien-Western Ecuador will lose the most spe- cies in the near future. Without urgent conservation intervention, we face mass extinctions in the hotspots.

1,798 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
23 Sep 2005-Science
TL;DR: The first global assessment of amphibians provides new context for the well-publicized phenomenon of amphibian declines and shows declines are nonrandom in terms of species' ecological preferences, geographic ranges, and taxonomic associations and are most prevalent among Neotropical montane, stream-associated species.
Abstract: Using information on Brazilian species, Pimenta et al . assert that we overestimated the number of threatened amphibians. This claim, based on a misunderstanding of the IUCN-The World Conservation Union Red List criteria and a strongly evidentiary attitude to listing species, almost certainly

1,594 citations


Authors

Showing all 1320 results

NameH-indexPapersCitations
Kevin M. Smith114171178470
Ary A. Hoffmann11390755354
David W. Macdonald111110951334
Michael R. Hoffmann10950063474
Fred W. Allendorf8623034738
Edward B. Barbier8445036753
James J. Yoo8149127738
Michael William Bruford8036923635
James E. M. Watson7446123362
Brian Huntley7422528875
Brian W. Bowen7418117451
Gordon Luikart7219337564
Stuart H. M. Butchart7224526585
Thomas M. Brooks7121533724
Joshua E. Cinner6817714384
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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Institution in previous years
YearPapers
20229
2021201
2020177
2019171
2018131
2017145