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.