Guest post by Dr. Craig Loehle
Last year, Willis Eschenbach had a WUWT post about extinction rates being exaggerated in the literature. I offered to help him get this published, and it is now out. We conclude that the extinction crisis for birds and mammals is very specific to island fauna which are uniquely sensitive to human impacts, including our pets and commensals like rats. It is not valid to extrapolate these extinctions to either the problem of deforestation on continents or to future impacts of climate change.
The process of getting this published was relatively painless which is surprising given how much we counter conventional wisdom in it. The paper is available free at Researchgate.
I would argue that blogs CAN be a real part of the scientific process. I would recommend that people follow up on good ideas they see and get them into print as this example illustrates.
Loehle, C. and W. Eschenbach. 2011. Historical Continental Bird and Mammal Extinction Rates. Diversity & Distributions DOI: 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2011.00856.x
Methods: We examined historical extinction rates for birds and mammals and contrasted island and continental extinctions. Australia was included as an island due to its isolation.
Results: Only six continental birds and three continental mammals were recorded in standard databases as going extinct since 1500 compared to 123 bird species and 58 mammal species on islands. Of the extinctions, 95% were on islands. On a per unit area basis, the extinction rate on islands was 177 times higher for mammals and 187 times higher for birds than on continents. The continental mammal extinction rate was between 0.89 and 7.4 times the background rate, whereas the island mammal extinction rate was between 82 and 702 times background. The continental bird extinction rate was between 0.69 and 5.9 times the background rate, whereas for islands it was between 98 and 844 times the background rate. Undocumented prehistoric extinctions, particularly on islands, amplify these trends. Island extinction rates are much higher than continental rates largely due to introductions of alien predators (including man) and diseases.
Main Conclusions: Our analysis suggests that conservation strategies for birds and mammals on continents should not be based on island extinction rates, and that on islands the key factor to enhance conservation is to alleviate pressures from uncontrolled hunting and predation.
Table 1: Extinctions since 1500 according to IUCN and CREO, with per species and per unit area rates.
Abstract:
Loehle, Craig, and Willis Eschenbach. 2011. Historical bird and terrestrial mammal extinction rates and causes.
Diversity and Distributions. doi: 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2011.00856.x
We examined historical extinction rates for birds and mammals and contrasted island and continental extinctions. Australia was included as an island because of its isolation. Only six continental birds and three continental mammals were recorded in standard databases as going extinct since 1500 compared to 123 bird species and 58 mammal species on islands. Of the extinctions, 95% were on islands. On a per unit area basis, the extinction rate on islands was 177 times higher for mammals and 187 times higher for birds than on continents. The continental mammal extinction rate was between 0.89 and 7.4 times the background rate, whereas the island mammal extinction rate was between 82 and 702 times background. The continental bird extinction rate was between 0.69 and 5.9 times the background rate, whereas for islands it was between 98 and 844 times the background rate. Undocumented prehistoric extinctions, particularly on islands, amplify these trends. Island extinction rates are much higher than continental rates largely because of introductions of alien predators (including man) and diseases. Our analysis suggests that conservation strategies for birds and mammals on continents should not be based on island extinction rates and that on islands the key factor to enhance conservation is to alleviate pressures from uncontrolled hunting and predation.
Copyright © 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Article posted on this website with permission.
Download the paper 
(Adobe PDF) Loehle & Eschenbach2011
Great job, Willis! World-famous biologists are not always the brightest bulbs in the firmament. I apologize for taking so long to post a comment.
As for “species robustness”, that’s one of the major areas of revision in the field. It seems to be much higher in general than assumed by the boxy constrained habitat parameters of all the best models.