Through the 1.
6 million years of these Pleistocene glacial
Modern Extinction
M Boulter, Natural History Museum, London, UK
Since the last ice age the number of individuals of many
species of animals and plants have declined, often to zero.
The losses reflect environmental changes caused both
naturally and by humans.
Introductory
article
Article Contents .
Introduction
. Early Human Influences
. The Last 5000 Years
. Predictions about the Future
Introduction
There are five main ways in which organisms can become
extinct: through habitat destruction, its overexploitation, the
introduction of alien species, the extinction of dependent
species, and naivete or ignorance of danger. They can all be
the result of human intervention in the operation of the
Earth-life system, that most complex of all self-organized
processes. Human originated functions of the kinds of
environmental change which drive evolution are happening
on such a large scale that there are reasons to compare the
present state of life on the Earth to a mass extinction event.
This article reviews two kinds of modern extinctions,
those that happen without the influence of humans, and
those caused by us. The first of these sections is by far the
shortest. But first, we need to be aware that the observation
of both kinds requires clear methods of assessment. The
most common is to monitor the species present in a defined
area. The second applies the scale of the respected
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
to well-known species as ‘vulnerable’, ‘endan gered’ or
‘probably extinct’, increasingly with some statistical
modelling to give more precision.
Despite the fact that we live in unusual times geologi
cally, when high latitudes are the sites of ice ages around
every 100 000 years, there are very few signs of animal and
plant species not surviving. The few that have become
extinct naturally are hard to distinguish from those many
more that have become extinct through another cause–the
activities of humans.
cycles, there have been few extinctions and few origins
above the level of species. Instead, humans, plants and
animals migrated with their environment as it moved
towards the equator for an oncoming cool period, and
polewards again for a warm one. Their structure usually
stayed the same though there can be quickadaptations to
slightly different ecology. Especially, there may have been
many new species of weeds and insects occupying the
increasingly unstable, diverse and changing environments
created by the icehouse/greenhouse cycles. The ice ages
have been a time of evolutionary stability relative to many
earlier mass and lesser extinction events when there was a
more stable climate.
Some of the few extinctions (and origins) have been at the
species level and appear to be the direct results of migration
in response to changing climate. Examples are particular
species of hedgehog, brown bear and beech trees that
became isolated in a few warm refuges during the last cold
stages. Now they have moved backnorth, there are
discernible genetic changes in the present-day populations
that show up as new species in slightly changed ecosystems.
Another migrant running away from the cold was the giant
deer, which survived the Younger Dryas cold period about
11 000 years bp and eventually became extinct around 9000
bp due to poor herbaceous food supplies left from the cold
years. Such changes in climate continue to influence
ecosystems and the few contemporary extinctions are
discernible through their succession. Species are being
caught between changing distribution as a result of climate
change and the low likelihood of finding distant habitats to
colonize. This results in increased extinction rates.
A database of those animal and plant species known to
have become extinct since ad 1600 has been prepared. It
shows that just 0.24% of animals and plants became extinct
during this period, 1069 species of the total 1 640 000
estimated by those authors, mostly over the last 100 years.
But there are so many shortcomings in the data, taxonomic,
ecological and demographic, that any inter pretation must be
treated very cautiously.
Early Human Influences
Neanderthal man was extinct 30 000 years ago and the
reasons why continue to attract fierce disagreements. Some
anthropologists favour a kind of Stone Age ethnic cleansing
but the commoner view is that our superior intelligence and
group bonding skills simply got the better of the other
species. As the humans (Homo sapiens) grew in number
they would have easily beaten neanderthals to find food and
shelter. That must have turned to violence, when of course
Homo sapiens was the superior fighter with much more
sophisticated intuition at warfare and mutual support. So
although the principle of the extinction was normal (one
species occupying the niche of another within a limited
 space) the actual mechanics were not. The superior social their own good were features that had
behaviour of the one and their ability to thinkahead about
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE SCIENCES / & 2002 Macmillan Publishers Ltd, Nature Publishing Group / www.els.net
Modern Extinction
species of animals and plants to the edge of extinction and
thousands of species of plants and animals are involved.
not entered the evolutionary process with other species. But
for humans, it had happened before and once again it was
the reason for the species’ success: the loss of large mammal
herds in North America. It has been called the ‘overkill’ of
mammoths, mastodons, rhinoceros and other large
mammals. Although still controversial about whether it was
caused by ice age cooling or human aggression, the sudden
decline in mammal diversity 8000 years ago is thought by
some to be the first sign that humans are causing a mass
extinction event. I argue that it could become equal in scale
to that which killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
These early human incidents show how our new presence
increased the rate of extinctions on the planet very suddenly.
The ability of humans to plan fights in groups, our use of
language, and our resulting talent for network ing, all led to
the fast success of our own species. These attributes mean
that we have a unique ability to change and control the
environment. What we have not yet fully realized is that this
talent is not good for other species, and their changes have
an environmental effect as well (albeit relatively static)
which we are usurping. Over the last few thousand years
extinctions above the level of species appear to have been
caused by human activities.
The Last 5000 Years
Humans are causing extinctions in three major ways: we
change and remove environments and climates, we
introduce species that threaten previously stable ecosys
tems, and we kill. It is clear from other self-controlled
systems that once things start to set a new pattern of change
in the timing of the system, many old routines have to
change so that true recovery is not possible. That, also, is
happening here and now.
A well-known example of change in land use is our
conversion of most tropical rainforest to agricultural land.
Similar human forces converted temperate forest in Europe
and grassland in North America to agricultural land just a
few hundred years before. The effects are that few habitable
parts of our planet have the same landscape now as before
humans wielded the knife. Because it has happened so
quickly we have no full experience of how to lookafter what
little natural landscape is left. Just 2% of the original forest
remains in northeast Brazil, as small copses surrounded by
open fields. They are badly managed and heavily hunted.
Three-quarters of the tree species are dispersed by birds and
mammals, which workineffectively in these false islands,
where shade is much reduced. There is an intimate balance
between shade tolerance, fruit size and wide or narrow bird
gape. That balance is not sustainable.
1
There are countless examples of similar upsets bringing
On the continents, large and medium-sized mammals are the
most demanding and the most at risk. But the loss of so
many plant species has an effect on their dependent insects
and small animals. Many more are on islands, where the last
species of a clade typically seekrefuge. The Galapagos, the
Canaries, the islands of southeast Asia, all have more than
10% species listed officially as being under threat. But it
seems that worse still has gone before. Recent excava tions
on many Atlantic and Pacific islands show that most have
lost half their bird species since colonization, and their
mammal species have been substantially reduced in number
as well. Change of land use and hunting are the main
reasons for the changes.
The first species known to have become extinct through
human introduction of an alien species is the dodo. A
pigeon-like bird from the African mainland flew to
Mauritius, a peaceful island with no predators, no need to
fly. So the bird evolved into a dumpy flightless bird, the
dodo. Dutch colonizers visited the island about 400 years
ago and also left the bird alone because it tasted so bad. But
the Dutch brought their dogs and pigs, and the ships had rats,
so there was competition for the dwindling food. Then there
were the dodo eggs, tasty to the new arrivals. The species
was extinct by 1700. Many other relictual species of
flightless birds found their way to islands and most are now
extinct for similar reasons to those that killed the dodos.
Now, one flightless species of the drab bird ‘rail’ survives on
Aldabra in the Indian Ocean.
There is no evidence for large-scale extinction of other
animals over the last 5000 years, a few species, here and
there, but no major global termination. Unfortunately this
continuity will not last much longer because intense human
activity is forcing huge changes in the size and location of
many of the populations. Nowhere is the problem clearer
than in the Caribbean Sea reef communities. Because of
over-fishing most large vertebrates disappeared by the 1950s,
but the reefs were unaffected because plankton eating smaller
fish and urchins survived, preventing the coral from being
strangled by seaweed. In 1983 the urchins all died and the
algae have since taken over, now being joined by toxicity
from fertilizer runoff, deforestation sediments and oil spills.
Soon, climate change will be having its effect, if any of the
reef is left alive.
Predictions about the Future
 comprises scientists from 18 different institutions around the
To help us start to understand these complex holistic world. What will the distribution of species looklike in a
problems, all attempts to gather evidence and propose hundred years? What are the most important changes taking
solutions must be on a global scale. One such project is to place in global environments to influence the
paint a global biodiversity scenario for the year 2100 and

2 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE SCIENCES / & 2002 Macmillan Publishers Ltd, Nature Publishing Group / www.els.net
Cambridge University Press.
Modern Extinction

patterns? The group of scientists argues that change in land

use will be the single biggest threat, followed by climate
change, the effects of nitrate fertilizers, the introduction of
non-endemic species, and finally the increase in carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere. They have argued that changing
tropical rainforest to agricultural use and the removal of
natural vegetation around the Mediterranean are among the
greatest threats. Although the extinctions have not yet been
completed, experts such as E. O. Wilson and R. M. May
have no hesitation in speculating that it could happen within
a few hundred years.
The relationships between politicians and scientists at the
international level is notoriously slow and is offering too
little too late. There are Red lists of thousands of animal and
plant species. CITES is the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species. From the 1993 Biodiversity
Convention there is a UN watchdog and several associated
projects, trying to list the world’s species, monitoring change
in all ecosystems throughout the world. Perhaps we kill less
with the knife. But as we strive for a better lifestyle, we kill
with the necessary fossil fuels instead and the few global
agencies set up to monitor and control the abuse have not yet
started to have an impact.
Further Reading
Bennett KD (1997) Evolution and Ecology: The Pace of Life. Cambridge:
Boulter MC (2002) Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man. London:
Fourth Estate.
Boulter MC and Hewzulla D (1999) Evolutionary modelling from family
diversity. Palaeontologia Electronica 2. http://www-odp.tamu.edu/
paleo/1999_2/model/plain.htm
Gonzalez S, Kitchener AC and Lister AM (2000) Survival of the Irish elk
into the Holocene. Nature 405: 753–754.
Gould SJ (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Lawton JH and May RM (eds) (1995) Extinction Rates. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Martin PS and Wright HE (eds) (1967) Pleistocene Extinctions. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Nee S and May RM (1997) Extinction and the loss of evolutionary history.
Science 278: 692–694.
Sala OE, Chapin III FS, Armesto R et al. (2000) Global biodiversity
scenarios for the year 2100. Science 287: 1770–1775.
Silva JMC and Tabareill M (2000) Tree species impoverishment and the
future flora of the Atlantic forest of north east Brazil. Nature 404: 72–
75.
Tattersall I and Matternes JH (2000) Once we were not alone. Scientific
American 282: 38–49.
Walther G-R, Post E, Convey P et al. (2002) Ecological responses to recent
climate change. Nature 416: 389–395.
Whittaker RJ (1998) Island Biogeography. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Willis KJ and Whittaker RJ (2000) The refugial debate. Science 287:
1406–1407.
Wilson EO (2002) The Future of Life. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
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