Extinction Rates Exaggerated, According to Controversial New Study

The most widely used method to calculate the extinction of species is “fundamentally flawed” and may have overestimated extinction rates by as much as 160 percent, according to a controversial paper in Nature. The paper asserts that because of decades of flawed calculations, there is reason to question earlier extinction projections, such as one made by the UN that future extinction rates would be 1,000 to 10,000 times greater than current rates. The paper’s authors said that a standard method to calculate extinction rates, known as species-area relationship, was flawed because it tended to exaggerate the impact of habitat loss on extinction. Still, co-author Steve Hubbell of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute said that the paper’s findings do not change the fundamental fact that the world is facing an extinction crisis because “we are losing habitat faster than at any time over the last 65 million years.” Numerous ecologists sharply criticized the paper, saying that Hubbell and his co-author had themselves exaggerated the inaccuracy of earlier extinction projections.