Search

Mining is a key driver of land-use change and environmental degradation globally, with the variety of mineral extraction methods used impacting biodiversity across scales. We use IUCN Red List threat assessments of all vertebrates to quantify the current biodiversity threat from mineral extraction, map the global hotspots of threatened biodiversity, and investigate the links between species' habitat use and life-history traits and threat from mineral extraction. Nearly 8% (4,642) of vertebrates are assessed as threatened by mineral extraction, especially mining and quarrying, with fish at particularly high risk. The hotspots of mineral extraction-induced threat are pantropical, as well as a large proportion of regional diversity threatened in northern South America, West Africa, and the Arctic. Species using freshwater habitats are particularly at risk, while the effects of other ecological traits vary between taxa. As the industry expands, it is vital that mineral resources in vulnerable biodiversity regions are managed in accordance with sustainable development goals. • 8% of vertebrates have mineral extraction threats (METs) • Tropics are global hotspots of METs for vertebrates • Ecological traits that correlate with METs differ among taxa Lamb et al. reveal mineral extraction as a prominent threat to global vertebrate biodiversity, identifying hotspots of risk located pan-tropically and in the Arctic, as well as species' ecological traits, including habitat use, range size, and slow life history, that correlate with the likelihood of mineral extraction threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If current trends continue, the tropical forests of the Anthropocene will be much smaller, simpler, steeper and emptier than they are today. They will be more diminished in size and heavily fragmented (especially in lowland wet forests), have reduced structural and species complexity, be increasingly restricted to steeper, less accessible areas, and be missing many heavily hunted species. These changes, in turn, will greatly reduce the quality and quantity of ecosystem services that tropical forests can provide. Driving these changes will be continued clearance for farming and monoculture forest plantations, unsustainable selective logging, overhunting, and, increasingly, climate change. Concerted action by local and indigenous communities, environmental groups, governments, and corporations can reverse these trends and, if successful, provide future generations with a tropical forest estate that includes a network of primary forest reserves robustly defended from threats, recovering logged and secondary forests, and resilient community forests managed for the needs of local people. Realizing this better future for tropical forests and people will require formalisation of land tenure for local and indigenous communities, better-enforced environmental laws, the widescale roll-out of payments for ecosystem service schemes, and sustainable intensification of under-yielding farmland, as well as global-scale societal changes, including reduced consumerism, meat consumption, fossil fuel reliance, and population growth. But the time to act is now, while the opportunity remains to protect a semblance of intact, hyperdiverse tropical forests., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)