Focus biodiversité

Experts believe H5N1 bird flu belongs in a growing category of infectious diseases that can cause pandemics across many species. But there are ways to reduce the risks..

The abrupt loss of many species from a system is generally attributed to a breakdown in ecological functioning. As species are sequentially knocked out, the whole community becomes unstable, and it all comes crashing down. Another mechanism that may be at play. My colleagues and I argue that despite the fact life on Earth displays such great variety, many species that live together appear to share remarkably similar thermal limits. That is to say, individuals of different species can tolerate temperatures up to similar points.

Human pressures have pushed the Earth system deep into the Anthropocene, threatening its stability, resilience and functioning. The Planetary Boundaries (PB) framework emerged against these threats, setting safe levels to the biophysical systems and processes that, with high likelihood, ensure life-supporting Holocene-like conditions. In this Review, we synthesize PB advancements, detailing its emergence and mainstreaming across scientific disciplines and society. The nine PBs capture the key functions regulating the Earth system. The safe operating space has been transgressed for six of these. PB science is essential to prevent further Earth system risks and has sparked new research on the precision of safe boundaries. Human development within planetary boundaries defines sustainable development, informing advances in social sciences. Each PB translates to a finite budget that the world must operate within, requiring strengthened global governance. The PB framework has been adopted by businesses and informed

The average size of monitored wildlife populations has shrunk by 73% since 1970.

Au milieu des années 1990, la population de vautours, forte de 50 millions d'individus, s'est effondrée, au point de devenir presque nulle, à cause du diclofénac, un analgésique non stéroïdien bon marché utilisé pour le bétail, mais qui est fatal aux vautours. Une nouvelle étude établit un lien entre le déclin des vautours en Inde et la propagation d'une bactérie mortelle, à l'origine de quelque 500 000 décès.

‘Catastrophic’ global decline due to dams, mining, diverting water and pollution threatens humans and ecosystems, study warns

Huge patches of forest in Tasmania have rapidly turned brown over recent months, with many trees dying after a dry summer. As climate change causes hotter and drier weather, can we expect more tree deaths in the future? 

The law will come into force in national parks within two years and in all of the country’s marine protected areas by 2030

The rapid growth of clean energy technologies is driving a rising demand for critical minerals. In 2022 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), seven major economies formed an alliance to enhance the sustainability of mining these essential decarbonization minerals. However, there is a scarcity of studies assessing the threat of mining to global biodiversity. By integrating a global mining dataset with great ape density distribution, we estimated the number of African great apes that spatially coincided with industrial mining projects. We show that up to one-third of Africa’s great ape population faces mining-related risks. In West Africa in particular, numerous mining areas overlap with fragmented ape habitats, often in high-density ape regions. For 97% of mining areas, no ape survey data are available, underscoring the importance of increased accessibility to environmental data within the mining sector to facilitate research into the complex interactions betw

A new study led by researchers at the University of Oxford has used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results, published today in the journal Science, could help to identify species most at risk today from human-driven climate change.

The planetary boundaries concept presents a set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come

A post for the anniversary of the execution of Sophie Scholl by the German Nazis in 1943

The Amazon rainforest is facing a barrage of pressures that might tip it into large-scale ecosystem collapse as soon as 2050, according to new research Wednesday warning of dire consequences for the region and the world. The Amazon, which holds more than 10 percent of the world's biodiversity, helps stabilize the global climate by storing the equivalent of around two decades of emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide.

Overexploitation and habitat loss pose extinction threats for migratory fish, birds and others, worldwide

Plastic waste in aquatic environments may be severely disrupting the reproductive behavior of marine animals. 

World Meteorological Organization says 2023 will be hottest year on record, leaving ‘trail of devastation and despair’

When Rishi Sunak granted 27 new North Sea licences this week, he wasn’t thinking about the survival of the living world, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Human activity has caused species groups to go extinct 35 times faster than they have over the past 500 years

Mass extinctions during the past 500 million y rapidly removed branches from the phylogenetic tree of life and required millions of years for evolution to generate functional replacements for the extinct (EX) organisms. Here we show, by examining 5,400 vertebrate genera (excluding fishes) comprising 34,600 species, that 73 genera became EX since 1500 AD. Beyond any doubt, the human-driven sixth mass extinction is more severe than previously assessed and is rapidly accelerating. The current generic extinction rates are 35 times higher than expected background rates prevailing in the last million years under the absence of human impacts. The genera lost in the last five centuries would have taken some 18,000 y to vanish in the absence of human beings. Current generic extinction rates will likely greatly accelerate in the next few decades due to drivers accompanying the growth and consumption of the human enterprise such as habitat destruction, illegal trade, and climate disruption. If all now-endangered genera

If Nature were to draw a map of the world, what would it look like? One Earth presents a novel biogeographical framework called Bioregions 2023, which delineates 185 discrete bioregions organized within the world's major biogeographical realms.