Effects of trade and poaching pressure on extinction risk for cacti in the Atacama Desert.

Autor: Villalobo-Lopez A; Departamento de Botánica, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales & Oceanográficas, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile.; Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB), Concepción, Chile., Peña CM; Departamento de Ciencias y Tecnología Vegetal, Escuela de Ciencias y Tecnologías, Universidad de Concepción, Los Ángeles, Chile., Varas-Myrik A; Centro Intihuasi, Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias, La Serena, Chile., Pillet M; International Union for Conservation of Nature, Species Survival Commission, Cactus and Succulent Plants Specialist Group, Cambridge, UK.; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA., Jahnsen P; Departamento de Ciencias y Tecnología Vegetal, Escuela de Ciencias y Tecnologías, Universidad de Concepción, Los Ángeles, Chile., Pliscoff P; Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB), Concepción, Chile.; Centro de Estudios Territoriales, Universidad de Los Andes, Santiago, Chile.; Millennium Institute Biodiversity of Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic Ecosystems, Santiago, Chile., Goettsch B; International Union for Conservation of Nature, Species Survival Commission, Cactus and Succulent Plants Specialist Group, Cambridge, UK., Guerrero PC; Departamento de Botánica, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales & Oceanográficas, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile.; Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB), Concepción, Chile.; International Union for Conservation of Nature, Species Survival Commission, Cactus and Succulent Plants Specialist Group, Cambridge, UK.; Millennium Institute Biodiversity of Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic Ecosystems, Santiago, Chile.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology [Conserv Biol] 2024 Oct; Vol. 38 (5), pp. e14353.
DOI: 10.1111/cobi.14353
Abstrakt: In this era of a global biodiversity crisis, vascular plants are facing unprecedented extinction rates. We conducted an assessment of the extinction risk of 32 species and 7 subspecies of Copiapoa, a genus endemic to Chile's fog-dependent coastal Atacama Desert. We applied the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List Categories and Criteria enhanced by expert insights and knowledge. Our primary aim was to analyze the impact of trade and poaching on their extinction risk. We employed machine learning models, including multinomial logistic regression (MLR), decision tree (DT), and random forest (RF), to analyze the relationships between conservation status and various factors. These factors encompassed trade and poaching activities, landscape condition, human footprint, monthly cloud frequency, and biological traits such as evolutionary distinctiveness and maximum diameter. Seven taxa had an area of occupancy (AOO) of <10 km 2 , 10 additional taxa had an AOO of <20 km 2 , and 16 taxa had an AOO of ≤100 km 2 . This reassessment exposed a critical level of extinction risk for the genus; 92% of the taxa were classified as threatened, 41% as critically endangered, 41% as endangered, and 10% as vulnerable. MLR, DT, and RF exhibited accuracies of 0.784, 0.730, and 0.598, respectively, and identified trade and poaching pressure and landscape condition as the primary drivers of extinction risk. Our assessment of Copiapoa showed trade, poaching, habitat degradation, and their synergic impacts as the main drivers of the genus' extinction risk. Our results highlight the urgent need for nations to develop and enforce strategies to monitor and control trade and poaching pressure because these factors are crucial for the long-term persistence of desert plants.
(© 2024 The Author(s). Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.)
Databáze: MEDLINE