Effects On Conservation
A study of latent extinction risk in mammals identified a number of "hotspots" where the average value of latent risk for mammal species was unusually high. This study suggested that these areas represented an opportunity for proactive conservation efforts, because these could become the "future battlegrounds of mammal conservation" if levels of human impact increase. Unexpectedly, the hotspots of mammal latent risk include large areas of Arctic America, where overall mammal diversity is not high, but where many species have the kind of biological traits (such as large body size and slow reproductive rate) that could render them extinction-prone. Another notable region of high latent risk for mammals is the island chain of Indonesia and Melanesia, where there are large numbers of restricted-range endemic species.
Because it is much more cost-effective to prevent species declines before they happen than to attempt to rescue species from the brink of extinction, latent risk hotspots could form part of a global scheme to prioritize areas for conservation effort, together with other kinds of priority areas such as biodiversity hotspots.
Read more about this topic: Latent Extinction Risk
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