An international team warns that a failure to act quickly and decisively will risk unprecedented species loss in the most diverse parts of the planet.
Ancistrus steam fish. Photo: Rafael Leitao.
The tropics contain the overwhelming majority of Earth’s biodiversity: their terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems hold more than three-quarters of all species, including almost all shallow-water corals and over 90% of terrestrial birds. However, tropical ecosystems are also subject to pervasive and interacting stressors, such as deforestation, overfishing and climate change, and they are set within a socio-economic context that includes growing pressure from an increasingly globalized world, larger and more affluent tropical populations, and weak governance and response capacities. Concerted local, national and international actions are urgently required to prevent a collapse of tropical biodiversity.
Press release / A global biodiversity collapse is imminent unless we take urgent, concerted action to reverse species loss in the tropics, according to a major study in Nature.
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