Holocene extinction

The elevated rate of species extinction since the end of the Pleistocene, driven increasingly by human activities. It is often called the sixth mass extinction.

Habitat destruction: The loss or degradation of environments that support wild populations and ecological processes. Land conversion and infrastructure remove or fragment the places species need to survive.
Dodo: A flightless pigeon native to Mauritius that became extinct in the late seventeenth century. Its rapid disappearance followed human arrival, hunting, and introduced animals on an isolated island.
Extinction: The permanent disappearance of a species when its last member dies. The Holocene extinction is a broad pattern composed of individual species extinctions.
Big Five mass extinctions: The five major extinction events identified in the fossil record as episodes of exceptionally high global species loss. Their geological scale provides the benchmark for comparing the current extinction crisis.
Defaunation: The decline or disappearance of animal populations and communities from ecosystems. Animal losses can transform ecosystems even where complete species extinction has not occurred.
Overexploitation: The use of wild organisms faster than populations can replace them. Hunting, fishing, and trade can drive populations toward extinction directly.
Passenger pigeon: A North American pigeon once numbering in the billions that became extinct in 1914. Commercial hunting and habitat change turned extraordinary abundance into extinction within decades.
Background extinction rate: The typical rate at which species disappear outside mass-extinction intervals. Comparisons with this baseline help estimate how unusually fast current losses are.
Anthropocene: A proposed geological epoch defined by substantial human influence on Earth's systems. The extinction crisis is often cited as evidence of humanity's lasting planetary impact.
Trophic cascade: A chain of indirect effects across food webs caused by changes in predator or consumer abundance. Removing species can reorganize food webs far beyond the lost population.

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