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Abstract

A critical step towards reducing the incidence of extinction is to identify and rank the species at highest risk, while implementing protective measures to reduce the risk of extinction to such species. Existing global processes provide a graded categorisation of extinction risk. Here we seek to extend and complement those processes to focus more narrowly on the likelihood of extinction of the most imperilled Australian birds and mammals. We considered an extension of existing IUCN and NatureServe criteria, and used expert elicitation to rank the extinction risk to the most imperilled species, assuming current management. On the basis of these assessments, and using two additional approaches, we estimated the number of extinctions likely to occur in the next 20 years. The estimates of extinction risk derived from our tighter IUCN categorisations, NatureServe assessments and expert elicitation were poorly correlated, with little agreement among methods for which species were most in danger-highlighting the importance of integrating multiple approaches when considering extinction risk. Mapped distributions of the 20 most imperilled birds reveal that most are endemic to islands or occur in southern Australia. The 20 most imperilled mammals occur mostly in northern and central Australia. While there were some differences in the forecasted number of extinctions in the next 20 years among methods, all three approaches predict further species loss. Overall, we estimate that another seven Australian mammals and 10 Australian birds will be extinct by 2038 unless management improves.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Geyle, HM and Woinarski, JCZ and Baker, GB and Dickman, CR and Dutson, G and Fisher, DO and Ford, H and Holdsworth, M and Jones, ME and Kutt, A and Legge, S and Leiper, I and Loyn, R and Murphy, BP and Menkhorst, P and Reside, AE and Ritchie, EG and Roberts, FE and Tingley, R and Garnett, ST
Keywords:	extinction, Australian birds and mammals
Journal or Publication Title:	Pacific Conservation Biology
Publisher:	CSIRO Publishing
ISSN:	1038-2097
DOI / ID Number:	https://doi.org/10.1071/PC18006
Copyright Information:	Copyright 2018 CSIRO. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Related URLs:	Google Scholar: Jones, ME UTAS Profile: Jones, ME
Item Statistics:	View statistics for this item

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