{"id":513854,"date":"2026-03-04T14:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T14:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/513854\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T14:11:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T14:11:07","slug":"specieswatch-is-the-worlds-wildlife-entering-its-samey-era-wildlife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/513854\/","title":{"rendered":"Specieswatch: is the world\u2019s wildlife entering its \u2018samey\u2019 era? | Wildlife"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Plants and animals are disappearing at an alarming rate across the planet, with some estimates suggesting a <a href=\"https:\/\/bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu\/bionumber.aspx?id=117271\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">loss of up to 150 species<\/a> every day. Meanwhile, the versatile species that thrive alongside humans, such as pigeons, rats and cockroaches, expand to fill the vacant gaps. Some scientists are calling this loss of biodiversity the \u201chomogenocene\u201d: the era when the world\u2019s wildlife became more samey.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">It started during the last ice age, when humans hunted large mammals such as the mammoth to extinction, and has continued to the present day as land is cleared to make way for fields, farms and cities. Specialist creatures that exploit a particular niche \u2013 such as the flightless Fijian bar-winged rail \u2013 have been pushed out by adaptable generalists, like mongooses, brought to Fiji by humans in the 1800s. More recently the homogenocene has hit the oceans, with warmer waters devastating coral reefs for example.<\/p>\n<p>Extremely warm waters have led to wildlife loss in coral reefs. Photograph: Jorge Silva\/Reuters<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Writing in <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/welcome-to-the-homogenocene-how-humans-are-making-the-worlds-wildlife-dangerously-samey-274092\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Conversation<\/a>, the palaeobiologists Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz from the University of Leicester describe how the most dramatic changes have taken place in recent decades. But the onward march of the homogenocene isn\u2019t always inevitable. When humans actively manage the land to enhance wildlife \u2013 by removing dominant invasive species, or using less land to grow food for example \u2013 diversity increases and nature bounces back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plants and animals are disappearing at an alarming rate across the planet, with some estimates suggesting a loss&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-513854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}