Contrary to alarmist claims that extinctions are rising due to climate change, the rate of species going extinct is actually falling. “In a recently published study, Researchers from the University of Arizona looked at 500 years of plant, arthropod, and land vertebrate extinction data and found that the extinction rate may have peaked around a century ago, when sailors had a habit of introducing rats and cats to vulnerable island ecosystems. They also found no evidence that climate change has increased the extinction rate over the past 200 years,” reports The Doomslayer.
The University of Arizona adds:
Prominent research studies have suggested that our planet is currently experiencing another mass extinction, based on extrapolating extinctions from the past 500 years into the future and the idea that extinction rates are rapidly accelerating.
A new study by Kristen Saban and John Wiens with the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, however, revealed that over the last 500 years extinctions in plants, arthropods and land vertebrates peaked about 100 years ago and have declined since then. Furthermore, the researchers found that the past extinctions underlying these forecasts were mostly caused by invasive species on islands and are not the most important current threat, which is the destruction of natural habitats.
The paper argues that claims of a current mass extinction may rest on shaky assumptions when projecting data from past extinctions into the future, ignoring differences in factors driving extinctions in the past, the present and the future. Published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, the paper is the first study to analyze rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions across plant and animal species.
Scientists recently found a coral they thought was extinct.
A species of rabbit thought to be extinct for 120 years was found in Mexico.
A rare flightless grasshopper was recently found in Virginia, where such grasshoppers had not been seen for 79 years.
Brazil’s rarest parrots have made a comeback, avoiding extinction.
In 2023, a dog discovered a species of mole long thought to be extinct, De Winton’s golden mole.
Snub-nosed monkeys are making a comeback in China.
Amur leopards are making a comeback in Russia’s Far East, multiplying five-fold.
