Sorta Situ: The New Reality of Management Conditions for Wildlife Populations in the Absence of "Wild" Spaces

Authors

• Barbara A. Wolfe, Wildlife and Conservation Medicine
• Roberto F. Aguilar, Humane Society of the United States
• A. Alonso Aguirre, George Mason University
• Glenn H. Olsen, U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
• Evan S. Blumer, OsoMono, LTD, Gahanna, Ohio and Retired Executive Director

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2012

Citation

Published in New Directions in Conservation Medicine: Applied Cases in Ecological Health, edited by A. Alonso Aguirre, Richard S. Ostfield, and Peter Daszak (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Comments

U.S. Government Work

Abstract

The rate of species loss today is approaching catastrophic levels. Scientists project that over the next two decades, more than 1 million species of plants and animals will become extinct. E.O. Wilson has estimated that "the rate ofloss may exceed 50,000 a year, 137 a day ... this rate, while horrendous, is actually the minimal estimate, based on the species/area relationship alone" (Kellert and Wilson 1993, p. 16; Aguirre 2009). Ever-expanding communities, strained natural resources, changes in land use, and other anthropogenic drivers are compromising ecosystems and rapidly changing the landscape and the availability of "wild" spaces.