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Elephants: An Example of Population Collapse Elephants: An Example of Population Collapse
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The Plight of the Cod The Plight of the Cod
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Habitat Destruction: Tigers at Risk Habitat Destruction: Tigers at Risk
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The Amazon Rainforest The Amazon Rainforest
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The Red List of Threatened Species The Red List of Threatened Species
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Critically Endangered Critically Endangered
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Mammals and Amphibians on Death Row Mammals and Amphibians on Death Row
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A Dynamic Situation A Dynamic Situation
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Toward the Sixth Great Mass Extinction Toward the Sixth Great Mass Extinction
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6 The Plight of Endangered Species
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Published:May 2024
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Abstract
This chapter evaluates how, after the raid on ocean islands, entire continents suffered the combined assault of overhunting, poaching, deforestation, and agriculture, as well as of invasive species that were carried around the world. It begins by looking at population decline, focusing on the case of African elephants. At the start of modern records, there were about twenty-five million elephants in Africa. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the population had dropped to ten million. The situation got worse with the expansion of the ivory trade, lowering the elephant population to six hundred thousand individuals by the late 1980s. The oceans are also greatly affected by population drops, as illustrated by the unfortunate example of the North Atlantic cod. One critical factor is habitat destruction or fragmentation. One emblematic animal threatened by habitat loss is Asia's tiger, Panthera tigris. Habitat destruction can also occur on an exceptionally large scale, as with the Amazon rainforest, the largest forest in the world. The chapter then assesses the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, before considering the idea of a sixth great mass extinction.
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