Between nineteen ninety-two and two thousand and seven, the white-rumped vulture of South Asia went from one of the most common large birds of prey in the world to about one thousandth of what it had been.
| Case | What was measured |
|---|---|
| Gyps vultures, South Asia | The white-rumped vulture was among the most common raptors of the Indian subcontinent; a decline of more than 95 percent began in the 1990s, and kidney failure with visceral gout was reproduced experimentally by feeding vultures tissue from diclofenac-treated livestock 4. A carcass-residue survey estimated declines of 80–99 percent a year, against an observed road-count decline of 48 percent a year in 2000–2003 5. By 2007 the white-rumped vulture stood at 0.1 percent of its early-1990s numbers; after India banned veterinary diclofenac in 2006, the decline slowed significantly, with the white-rumped vulture's decline rate falling to about a third of its pre-ban value by 2007–2008, though elimination of the drug from the food supply was still incomplete 6 |
| Guam, brown tree snake | First detected on Guam in the 1950s, arriving in imported cargo; a major contributor to the loss of nine of 11 native forest birds, with significant declines in native lizards and bats 2 |
| Invasive alien species, worldwide | More than 37,000 alien species are established worldwide and more than 3,500 of them are harmful; their global economic cost passed US$423 billion a year in 2019, a bill that has at least quadrupled every decade since 1970; they are a major factor in 60 percent of recorded global plant and animal extinctions and the sole driver in 16 percent 7 |
| Northern cod, Grand Banks | Spawning biomass fell from about 1.6 million tonnes in 1962 to between 72,000 and 110,000 tonnes in 1992; the federal fisheries minister announced a two-year moratorium on 2 July 1992, affecting about 19,000 fishermen and plant workers 8. The province's heritage record describes about 30,000 people put out of work and calls it uncertain, as of 2008, when or whether the stock would rebound 9 |
| DDT and the bald eagle | DDT residue washed into waterways, was absorbed by aquatic plants and fish, and thinned the eagles' eggshells; by 1963 only 417 nesting pairs were known in the contiguous United States, and by the 2007 delisting there were at least 9,789 10. The cancellation order for general use was issued on 14 June 1972 and took effect on 31 December that year 11 |
| The gharial, Chambal River | Numbers in the National Chambal Sanctuary recovered from 107 in 1979 to 1,065 in 1992, then fell back below 200 by the early 2000s; the sanctuary holds about 80 percent of the world's adult gharials and about 90 percent of wild nests, and counts have risen again to 1,857 in 2019, about 3.2 percent a year 12 |
| Amphibian chytridiomycosis | A global assessment found the amphibian fungal panzootic implicated in declines of at least 501 species and 90 presumed extinctions, with the greatest effects on large-bodied, range-restricted frogs in wet climates; declines peaked in the 1980s, only 12 percent of declined species show signs of recovery, and 39 percent are still declining 13 |
| White-nose syndrome, bats | First documented in New York in 2006; declines of more than 90 percent in northern long-eared, little brown and tri-colored bats in fewer than 10 years 14 |
| The pied flycatcher, Netherlands | Across nine Dutch populations followed for two decades, populations declined by about 90 percent where the food peak for nestlings comes early and the birds are mistimed, while areas with a late food peak showed at most a weak decline 3 |
ipbes.net
invasivespeciesinfo.gov
doi.org
doi.org
doi.org
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
publications.gc.ca
heritage.nf.ca
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
usgs.gov
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