Human Impact and Pressures

How much potential impact may humans living in a protected area have on that protected area and on the habitats, species and ecological processes therein? How much of this potential impact is due to recent (15-year) increases in human population density? By identifying protected areas with low population density, it is possible to highlight locations that are likely to better conserve the species and ecological processes that are associated to more pristine conditions and that are more sensitive to the direct and indirect impacts from human activities.

A new study quantified how the consumption habits of people in each country, through trade and supply networks, imperil threatened and near-threatened terrestrial species of amphibians, mammals and birds. For the study, recently published in Scientific Reports, researchers used a metric called the extinction-risk footprint. The team found that 76 countries are net “importers” of this footprint, meaning they drive demand for products that contribute to the decline of endangered species abroad.

Oil seed crops, especially oil palm, are among the most rapidly expanding agricultural land uses, and their expansion is known to cause significant environmental damage. Accordingly, these crops often feature in public and policy debates, which are hampered or biased by a lack of accurate information on environmental impacts. This dataset presents a global crop map. It covers areas where oil palm plantations were detected at global scale, and includes industrial and smallholder mature oil palm plantations.

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How much potential impact may humans living in a protected area have on that protected area and on the habitats, species and ecological processes therein? How much of this potential impact is due to recent (15-year) increases in human population density? By identifying protected areas with low population density, it is possible to highlight locations that are likely to better conserve the species and ecological processes that are associated to more pristine conditions and that are more sensitive to the direct and indirect impacts from human activities.

A fundamental requirement for productive fisheries is maintenance of the biodiversity that offers natural systems resilience against changing conditions.(FAO, State of World Fishery and Aquaculture 2020). Threatened marine fish species can be legally caught in industrial fisheries and moreover according to FAO, annual estimate of fisheries interactions with at least 20 million individuals of endangered, threatened and/or protected species. Here we show the catch records (tonnes) of globally threatened species in the EEZ by country in the last 10 years.

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