160-12 The Holocene as a Testing Ground for Developing Truly Actionable Extinction Lessons

Abstract:

Of all the mass extinction events to unfold on our planet, only today’s involves a conscious attempt to avert it. Studies of ancient mass extinctions have not only captured the imagination of our global society but have meaningfully allowed us to diagnose the magnitude of our ongoing biodiversity crisis and motivate recognition that action should be taken. But, the temporal and spatial scales of data used to describe mass extinctions are profoundly decoupled from the scale of data employed in context-specific conservation decision-making. Can these scales ever be bridged?

We propose that the Holocene represents the ideal testing ground for identifying which conservation problems can benefit from the insights offered by the fossil record. To illustrate this, we developed a new global dataset of Holocene mammal extinctions to explore the differing conservation information-content of past environmental archives, including revised last appearance dates for >300 postglacial mammal species losses. These data reveal that even in near time, extinction data quality varies extensively in geographic, temporal, and taxonomic, information content, hindering our ability to fully contextualize the present with both ancient mass extinctions and even geologically recent historical diversity. We identify key data incompatibilities and discontinuities that complicate direct transfer of conservation-relevant information between past and present. These differences are inherent to 1) extinction as an evolutionary process; 2) the types of data available to paleontologists and neontologists; and 3) the training and lived experiences of people working across biodiversity disciplines.  

Yet, we also identify many opportunities in which Holocene datasets have been vital to conservation efforts on global and local scales. Drawing from experience with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, we provide concrete examples of how fossil records have informed IUCN Red List and Green Status frameworks and highlight ways that paleontologists can play larger roles in such assessments. On the scale of regional wildlife management, we share how Holocene fossil records can be crucial components of reintroduction and rewilding discussions through collaborative work with agencies and non-governmental organizations. Moving forward, we encourage paleontologists to critically interrogate how the scales and biases of their fossil datasets may align with or diverge from existing policy frameworks and management programs, and to seek out transdisciplinary conservation communities of research and practice.

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