Gerardo Ceballos: “Will the Ongoing Population Extinctions Lead to a 6th Mass Extinction?”

Episode 25
June 22, 2022

(Conversation Recorded on June 16, 2022)

On this episode, we meet with ecologist and conservationist Dr. Gerardo Ceballos.

Ceballos discusses animal populations, the sixth mass extinction, his new project, Creatures United, and how we can better care about and protect Earth’s remaining biodiversity.

About Gerardo Ceballos

Dr. Gerardo Ceballos is an ecologist and conservationist very well-known for his theoretical and empirical work on animal ecology and conservation. He is particularly recognized by his influential work on global patterns of distribution of diversity, endemism, and extinction risk in vertebrates. Ceballos was the first scientist to publish the distribution of a complete group of organisms (mammals). He is also well – known for his contribution to understanding the magnitude and impacts of the sixth mass extinction; he has shown that vertebrate species that became extinct in the last century would have taken more than 10 thousand years under the “normal” extinction rate.

Show Notes

PDF Transcript

00:40 - Gerardo’s works, books, info, and Stop Extinction

02:28 - The Last Eskimo [Last of the Curlews]

03:47 - How many species exist on earth

04:44 - Every year 18,000 species are described

04:45 - 2 new whale species discovered in 2021 - Rice Whale and Ramari’s beaked whale

05:02 - Since 2000 there have been over 60 new species of primates

05:10 - A new species of orangutans was found in 2017

05:40 - The steller’s sea cow was found and described after it was distinct

06:46 - Right now we have the highest number of species in the last 700 million years 

07:27 - We have lost a lot of species in the last 10,000 years

08:05 - The giant mammals of North America, many of which were killed off because of humans

08:25 - Pleistocene extinction

08:48 - 18,000 years ago there was 3 km of ice in the middle of North America

09:40 - Number of vertebrate species on Earth

10:20 - It would take 2,000 years to catalog all the species on Earth

11:28 - Flying squirrels

12:33 - Cape Hunting Dog

14:04 - Mexican President’s investment in fossil fuels

16:56 - Neurochemicals and technology vs nature

18:45 - Citizen Kane

24:03 - E.O. Wilson

27:01 - Understanding the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

27:38 - Paul Ehrlich and his TGS Episode

27:50 - Gerardo’s first paper - Diversity and Conservation of Mexican Mammals (1991)

30:54 - Ecological extinction

31:39 - Population drop of elephants since the beginning of the century

32:13 - Ecological services of elephants

33:38 - Elk and wolves ecosystem in Yellowstone

34:31 - An elephant is being killed every ~40 minutes

35:22 - TGS Episode with Peter Ward

36:22 - Ease of disease spread in wet markets

36:45 - Illegal wildlife trade is highly profitable

39:59 - Marx, Darwin, Freud

41:18 - David Attenborough

43:06 - Biological Annihilation

44:33 - 80% of individual animals have been lost since the 1970s

45:30 - Only 2% of the large fish remain on the planet in mid 2000s compared to the 1960s

46:09 - Decreased insects stuck to cars

47:13 - Daniel Pauly Shifting Baselines and TGS Episode

50:55 - Pesticide effects on insect populations

51:22 - Monarch Butterfly population decline

52:50 - Jaguar populations

53:45 - Gerardo’s work recovering Jaguar populations

54:57 - Issues with inbreeding among low populations

55:40 - The Elephant Seal protection

56:04 - 1920 declaration of Mexico as a marine animal haven

56:42 - 500 individuals is the critical population point

57:06 - Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction

57:57 - The mass of all humans and domestic animals is 96% of the entire planet

59:35 - 70% of bird biomass is domestic birds, and 30% is the other 11,000 species

1:01:34 - Ecuador has 2,000 species of birds while the continental U.S. has 800

1:02:14 - Industrial breeding of chickens

1:03:37 - Rate of change of climate is faster than anticipated

1:03:56 - Peak Oil Podcast

1:04:40 - Past pandemics

1:04:50 - Statistics of hunger and refugees

1:09:12 - The Maya Train

1:12:00 - 6th Mass Extinction

1:13:42 - Tony Barnosky et. al Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?

1:14:10 - Background extinction rate

1:15:20 - Background extinction rates for invertebrates

1:19:25 - Nuclear Winter

1:20:00 - Gerardo’s lab

1:21:54 - Proposed Endangered Species Act in Mexico

1:23:38 - Ways to reduce your environmental footprint

1:27:03 - Stop Extinction - Creatures United campaign coming soon


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Jason Bradford: “A Hybrid Path to the Future of Farming”