Field Museum expert: One in four mammals threatened with extinction

One in four mammal species appears to be threatened with extinction — a situation that could have dire consequences not just for animals but people, too, a Field Museum expert says.

Lawrence Heaney, a Field mammal curator and a co-author of a new survey of the world’s 5,487 species of mammals, said that critters are, literally, the canaries in the coal mine, alerting the world of coming social and political unrest.

Heaney, who does much of his work in the Philippines, said species usually die out because of habitat destruction, due to logging or farming expansion. On mountainsides, loss of forests can create terrible floods.

“That has a tremendous economic impact,” Heaney said. “It also means there are going to be significant social and political problems that follow. The extinction of a species in many parts of the world is a leading indicator of problems coming.’’

Heaney is one of more than 1,700 scientists — seven from the Field Museum — who have worked on assembling an unprecedented “Who’s Who” of mammals, from aardvarks to zebras. The Oct. 10 issue of Science magazine will feature the results of the study, funded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Chicago experts used museum collection data and field work from far points of the planet to add to the new registrar, the first in more than a decade.

“The survey tells us what we’ve got and what challenges we face,’’ said another Field mammal expert, Bruce Patterson, who, along with Heaney and about 100 other scientists, authored the mammal census. “We have to prioritize what we’re going to save.”

While land mammals are threatened by the destruction of their habitats, sea mammals are struggling with fishing nets and pollution, said Patterson.

Heaney said that species have been disappearing “since species first evolved,’’ but, “There’s no question the rate of extinction has increased very, very dramatically over the last 200 years — and a great deal over the last 50 years.

“There’s no question we humans have vastly contributed to that,’’ he said.

Michael Hoffman, a mammal expert at the International Union of Conservation of Nature, said the current pace of die-off is 100 to 1,000 times higher than the so-called “background rate” of extinction — the average rate, over millions of years, at which species bite the dust.

Hoffman said large and small mammals play critical roles in the regeneration of forests and savannahs by spreading plant seeds through their feces. Forests, in turn, help blunt the impact of global warming.

“There should also be a moral obligation to conserve biodiversity, if not for ourselves then for future generations,” Hoffman told the Reuters news service.