Published at the just concluded COP15 summit in Canada, the research was led by European Commission scientist, Giovanni Strona and Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University.
Blaming over-exploitation of resources, land-use change, over-harvesting, pollution, climate change and biological invasions, the academics say the planet has already entered its sixth mass extinction event, driven by human activity and climate change.
Bradshaw said: “Children born today who live into their 70’s can expect to witness the disappearance of literally thousands of plant and animal species, from tiny orchids and the smallest insects to iconic animals such as the elephant and the koala.”
Using a supercomputer, the scientists created a world with more than 15,000 ‘food webs’ to predict the fate of interconnected species. They say the tool ‘can map extinctions everywhere on earth’ and predicts a grim future for global diversity, confirming beyond doubt that the world is in the throes of its sixth mass extinction event.
Prof. Strona said: “Essentially, we have populated a virtual world from the ground up and mapped the resulting fate of thousands of species across the globe to determine the likelihood of real-world tipping points.”
