Wave of Extinctions in Oceana

Habitat destruction, overfishing, and the spread of invasive species now threaten a large number of species in Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands with extinction, and governments must act quickly to create far more extensive parks and reserves on land and sea, according to a new study. An international team of 14 scientists combed through 24,000 scientific publications to put together a sobering picture of biodiversity loss across much of the southern Pacific Ocean. Published in the journal Conservation Biology, the report said that more than 1,200 bird species have become extinct on southern Pacific islands in recent centuries, that 50 percent of Australia’s forest ecosystems have been modified or destroyed by agriculture and that nearly three-quarters of remaining forests have been degraded by logging, that habitat destruction accounts for 80 percent of all threatened species in Oceana, and that invasive species have caused 75 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate extinctions on the region’s islands. Among other measures, the scientists recommended setting aside 10 percent of terrestrial regions and 50 percent of marine areas as parks or reserves, as well as restoration of degraded ecosystems such as wetlands.