Talk:Extinction debt

Detection of Extinction Debt

Two glaring factual errors in this section:

• "Processes that drive extinction debt are inherently slow"

That's not accurate... certainly some processes that cause extinction debt are slow (invasive species populations becoming established over years, decades etc), but some, such as habitat loss and fragmentation, can occur very rapidly (days, weeks, months). Rapid habitat change that occurs on a wide scale in a short time frame may be temporally isolated (starting and ending in a fixed time period) and lead to extinction debt later.

• "it is difficult to locate or count the very small populations of near-extinct species"

That is also a sweeping statement which is clearly not applicable in all cases - it obviously depends on the species and on the area in which they exist. For example, small animals in a small area (e.g. rodents on a small island), small amimals in a large area (vocal insects or songbirds in a forest) or large animals in a large area (large mammals in a savannah) can be easy to find and monitor. It also depends on what one means by "near extinct". A species may locally have a large population immediately prior to local extinction. It also overlooks the issue of tipping points - a species population may appear robust for many years after critical impacts occur, only to collapse suddenly. Examples include North West Atlantic cod in the early 1990s (exploitation unsustainable and yields very high for perhaps a decade prior to abrupt population collapse), vultures in India and Pakistan in the 2000s (localised extinction still occurring in 2011 years after use of diclofenac has ceased). It entirely depends on species and context.

I'll update the section shortly (May 2011) to reflect recent research. Mudpuddles1418 (talk) 15:49, 5 May 2011 (UTC)