One fifth of all species in Europe threatened with extinction
This is the conclusion of a new study led by biogeographer Axel Hochkirch of the National Museum of Natural History Luxembourg and the University of Trier. This makes the situation even more drastic than previously assumed by researchers. The new study is based on the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species for Europe from 2020, which included almost 15,000 species. This corresponds to ten percent of all animal and plant species on the continent.
The extinction of species is taking on apocalyptic proportions
The study results in detail
In Europe, around a fifth (19.4 %, 2,839 species) of the 14,669 species assessed are threatened with extinction. These include birds, fish, mammals and reptiles (vertebrates), insects and spiders (invertebrates) and plants such as trees, ferns, mosses and aquatic plants.
50 species are classified as extinct, regionally extinct or extinct in the wild and a further 75 as possibly extinct. The percentage of threatened species was higher for plants (27%) and invertebrates (24%) than for vertebrates (18%).
Almost half (6,926 of 14,669) of the assessed species in Europe are endemic, including 2,125 threatened species. 86 percent (1,171) of the threatened invertebrates are endemic to Europe. Just under half (54%) of threatened species were documented in protected areas, a lower percentage than for near-threatened or least threatened species (61%).
According to the study, this casts doubt on the suitability of the European network of protected areas as a means of protecting all endangered species and underlines the need to expand and improve it.
The Alps are a biodiversity hotspot
Source: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293083
The analysis of terrestrial biodiversity in Europe underlines the importance of mountain systems for the continued existence of biodiversity in Europe. Mountains harbor a large number of endemic species and are also less altered by humans than lowlands and coasts.
The largest number of species in terms of area was found in the Southern Alps, the Eastern Pyrenees and the Pirin Mountains in Bulgaria, while threatened species diversity peaks in the Alps and the Balkans.
As we have a particularly high level of biodiversity in Austria, our responsibility to preserve it is also particularly high, says Jan Christian Habel from the Department of Environment and Diversity at the University of Salzburg.
Reasons for species extinction
Our analyses confirm that biodiversity is affected by a variety of threats. According to the authors of the study: "While the finding that agricultural land-use change is a major threat has been made many times before, our analysis is the most comprehensive and unequivocal to date, confirming the scale of this threat on a continental scale."
- Intensive agriculture
This poses the greatest threat to European species. The strong impact of agricultural land use is more pronounced for invertebrates and plants, while vertebrates (especially fish) are more often threatened by overexploitation, as they can be directly hunted, trapped and fished (including bycatch), resulting in a widespread threat to marine fish and other marine vertebrates.
- Overexploitation of biological resources
According to the WWF, 75% of habitats on land have been severely altered, including industrial agriculture, mining and forest destruction.
- Settlement and commercial development
Residential and commercial development is a major cause of habitat loss and degradation affecting many invertebrate and plant species.
- Environmental pollution
This is a particular threat to freshwater species such as fish, molluscs and dragonflies.
- Climate change
It is a major threat to many species and was identified in the study as the most important future threat. This is confirmed by the increasing number of droughts in Europe, which increase the risk of forest fires, exacerbated by increased water abstraction for agriculture and households.
Conclusion on the global situation
"Europe is one of the regions of the world for which we still have the best data," says Matthias Glaubrecht, Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Hamburg. "If the situation here is already so dramatic, this means that the biodiversity crisis in other, far more species-rich regions is very likely to be even more explosive - especially in the still insufficiently researched tropical regions, for example in Asia and Africa, where there is uninterrupted human population growth as the ultimate driving factor behind resource consumption." And many species have not even been recorded yet.
"These are species that we are destroying faster than we can research them."
says Glaubrecht.
This - very worrying - development stands in stark contrast to the species conservation agreement reached at the Kunming-Montreal Conference last December to halt the extinction of species caused by humans by 2030 and to reduce the extinction rate or risk of extinction of all species tenfold by 2050.
What we lack are actions
"Large areas of European landscapes are still subject to increasing intensification of land use," says Carl Beierkuhnlein, Professor of Biogeography at the University of Bayreuth, to the Science Media Center. "Agricultural fragmentation of habitats, merging of plots into large fields, use of agricultural chemicals, disposal of liquid manure and multiple mowing of grassland per year condemn nature conservation efforts on the sometimes tiny remaining areas to failure."
"It is important to introduce measures to protect endangered species. These have already shown great success with vertebrates, as evidenced by the spread of previously endangered species such as the black stork, white-tailed eagle, peregrine falcon, eagle owl and otter," says Hochkirch: "It is important to implement the necessary conservation measures in good time. We already have enough evidence to act - what we lack is action."
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