Human footprint driving mammal extinction crisis

Human impacts are the biggest risk factor in the possible extinction of a quarter of all land-based mammals. Researchers compared a 16-year trend in the global human footprint with the extinction risk of around 4500 land-based mammal species. We live in an era when one in every four mammal species is at risk of going extinct. But with more than 5600 mammal species globally, it's time-consuming and expensive to track the changes for every species. To get a clearer idea of what's systematically leading to these declines, combined mapping of human pressures with extinction risk assessment data for mammal species. The researchers found that human footprint was linked strongly to extinction risk change for land-based mammals – more than any other variable they tested.