Extinction Rates Soar to 1,000 Times Normal (But There's Hope)

A map showing the diversity of bird species in North and South America. Yellow and red show areas of more diversity, such as the northern Andes and coastal Brazil.

Species on Earth are going extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they would be without human influence, new research finds. But there's still time to save the world from this biodiversity disaster.

Between 100 and 1,000 species per million go extinct every year, according to the new analysis. Before humans came on the scene, the typical extinction rate was likely one extinction per every 10 million each year, said study researcher Stuart Pimm, a Duke University biologist.

These numbers are a big increase from the previous estimates, which held that specieswere going extinct 100 times faster than usual, not 1,000 times faster or more, Pimm told Live Science. But despite the bad news, he said, his research is "optimistic." New technology and citizen scientists are allowing conservationists to target their efforts better than ever before, he said. [Biodiversity Threats: See Maps of Species Hotspots]

"Although things are bad, and this paper shows that they're actually worse than we thought they were, we are in a much better position to do something about that," Pimm said, referring to the study published today (May 29) in the journal Science.

Understanding extinction

Pimm and his colleagues have long worked to understand the effect of humanity on the rest of the species that share the planet. In the history of life on Earth, five mass extinctions have wiped out more than half of life on the planet. Today, scientists debate whether humanity is causing the sixth mass extinction.

This question is trickier than it may seem. Certainly, humans have driven species from the dodo to the Tasmanian tiger to the passenger pigeon to extinction. There's no doubt that continuing deforestation and climate change will destroy even more species, including some humanity will never get the chance to discover. But researchers don't even know for sure how many species exist on the planet. About 1.9 million species have been described by science, but estimates as to how many are out there range from 5 million to 11 million.

Knowing how many species go extinct without human influence is another challenge. The fossil record, after all, is frustratingly incomplete. To get an estimate rooted in science, Pimm and his colleagues used data from molecular phylogeny, which uses DNA information to build a web of relationships between species. Phylogenic trees can show how quickly species diversified. And because species don't normally go extinct faster than they diversify to form new species, these trees give a sense of the upper limit of normal extinction rates. By this method, the researchers arrived at the background estimate of one extinction per 10 million species per year. [Wipe Out: History's Most Mysterious Extinctions]

Humanity's great extinction?

Next, the researchers looked at modern extinction rates. They tracked animals known to science, calculating how long they tended to survive after discovery (or if they are still extant). These rates brought them to the estimate of 100 extinctions or more per million species each year — which did not come as a great surprise.

"It's not a good thing, because it's higher than it was before, but for the community that focuses on these things, we kind of knew where it was headed," said study researcher Clinton Jenkins, a conservation researcher at the Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (IPÊ) in Nazaré Paulista, Brazil.

But, Jenkins and Pimm agreed, there is hope. The most endangered species tend to be ones with small ranges in threatened areas, Jenkins told Live Science. Many are in countries without many resources to protect them, but the ability of scientists to track and understand the threats has never been better. Satellite imagery and global tracking of deforestation can reveal habitat loss in near-real time. And websites like biodiversitymapping.org (created by Jenkins) reveal biodiversity hotspots for birds, mammals, amphibians and more.

"It's probably less than 10 percent [of land area] that has most of the species we're really at risk of losing," Jenkins said. "So if we focus on those areas, it can solve most of the problem."

Citizen scientists can help, too, the researchers said. Smartphone cameras enable people to go out, snap photos of organisms and report their findings to conservation groups. Pimm and Jenkins both recommend iNaturalist, which began as a master's project by graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. The site allows users to upload photos of plants and animals, tagging them with the location of the sighting and the likely species, which other users then confirm. The site is linked to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List, which tracks threatened species.

Jenkins uses the site himself. For example, in April, he noticed a group of stripy-tailed primates scurrying around the trees near his home in Nazaré Paulista. He went outside with a pair of binoculars and a smartphone and snapped some photos, which he uploaded to iNaturalist. Other users quickly confirmed that his neighbors were buffy-tufted-ear marmosets (Callithrix aurita), which the IUCN Red List categorizes as a vulnerable species.

"Within the same day, that picture was on the Red List page of that species as an example," Jenkins said.

Such citizen observations can help define species' ranges and numbers, which are often out of date in the scientific literature. That data, in turn, can reveal whether conservation projects are working and what areas are at risk, the researchers said.

"People often say that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction," Pimm said. "We're not in the middle of it — we're on the verge of it. And now we have to tools to prevent it."

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Plants and animals are disappearing at least 1,000 times faster than they were before humans arrived.
Scientists still optimistic

BANGKOK (AP) — More than 1,000 Thai troops and police sealed off one of Bangkok's busiest intersections Thursday to prevent a planned protest, as authorities said they would no longer allow any demonstrations against last week's military coup.

Truckloads of soldiers blocked all incoming roads to the capital's Victory Monument in a massive show of force at the height of evening rush hour in an area that serves as one of the city's commuter bus hubs.

More than a dozen police prisoner trucks were parked along the emptied roundabout, but there was little sign of protesters, who have come out almost daily to defy a ban on political gatherings.

A Belgian man was detained for displaying a T-shirt saying "PEACE PLEASE," and two Thai women were taken away in a police truck after they showed signs with anti-coup messages.

The anti-coup demonstrations have been generally small and mostly leaderless but protesters had planned to gather Thursday and called for a mass rally on Sunday.

Gen. Somyot Poompanmoung, the deputy national police chief, said the small protests would no longer be allowed. He said nine companies of soldiers and police — about 1,350 — were deployed in Thursday's operation.

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Thai school girls have their photographs taken with soldiers guarding the area to prevent anti-coup …

"We know their rally is mainly for symbolic reasons, but it's against the law," he said. "We have to keep the law sacred."

Somyot warned that if protesters change their tactics, "we are ready to tackle that."

Earlier, in another part of the city, about 100 students held an anti-coup protest on the campus of prestigious Thammasat University which ended peacefully.

The large army deployment came a day after hundreds of protesters gathered at Victory Monument and outnumbered soldiers. Scuffles broke out in which water bottles and other objects were hurled at soldiers, and a green army Humvee was vandalized with large white letters reading, "NO COUP. GET OUT."

The mounting tension comes a week after the army seized power, overthrowing a government that won a landslide election victory three years earlier. The army says it had to act to restore order after seven months of increasingly violent political turbulence.

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Thai military polie officers patrol while guarding the area near Victory Monument in Bangkok, Thaila …

Earlier Thursday, the army told foreign media that it eventually plans to hold elections, but offered no time frame or roadmap for guiding the country back to democratic rule.

"We neither have any ambition nor desire to cling to power," said Lt. Gen. Chatchalerm Chalermsukh, the army's deputy chief of staff.

"We will definitely have an election," he said. But he added, "this will take some time. If you ask me how long it will take, that's difficult to answer."

The United States, a longstanding ally of Thailand, said Thursday there isn't a legitimate reason to delay elections.

"We urge the military council to facilitate an inclusive and transparent electoral process and we encourage them to do that soon," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington.

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Thai soldiers stand guard at Victory Monument in Bangkok, Thailand Thursday, May 29, 2014. Hundreds …

In the past week, the junta has acted to silence its critics and has warned that it will not tolerate dissent.

It has summoned more than 250 people, including members of the government it ousted and other leading political figures, journalists, scholars and activists seen as critical of the regime. Roughly 70 people are still in custody.

Several political figures, mostly on the pro-government side, were held incommunicado for a week and freed only after signing waivers agreeing not to say or do anything that could stir conflict.

Foreign news channels such as CNN and BBC have been blocked, and several Thai news outlets have been shut down or are practicing self-censorship. The military has said it will crack down on online speech it considers inflammatory. It denied responsibility for a brief and partial shutdown of Facebook in Thailand on Wednesday, but has begun targeting websites deemed threatening. Among those now blocked is the Thailand page of Human Rights Watch.

Pisit Pao-in, an official at the Information and Communication Technology Ministry, told reporters Thursday that the government would ask the popular Japan-based instant messaging service LINE to cooperate in blocking users who send material considered undesirable by the military regime.

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Thai Student Center for Democracy members raise their clenched fists during a gathering to protest a …

The moves have been widely criticized by the international community.

Chatchalerm cited the anti-coup protests as a reason that elections cannot take place immediately.

"Today there are still protests. It shows that some people want to create turmoil. So it's impossible to hold elections at the moment," he said.

At the center of Thailand's deep political divide is Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister supported by many rural Thais for his populist programs but despised by others — particularly Bangkok's elite and middle classes — over allegations of corruption, abuse of power and disrespect for the monarchy. He was ousted in a 2006 coup and lives abroad in self-imposed exile, but held great influence over the overthrown government, which had been led by his sister until a court ousted her this month.

Despite the latest political upheaval, life has continued largely as normal in most of the country, with tourists still relaxing at beach resorts and strolling through Buddhist temples in Bangkok and elsewhere.

A curfew remains in effect, although it was shortened Wednesday to midnight to 4 a.m., from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. earlier. The curfew has not affected critical travel, including that of tourists arriving at airports.

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Associated Press writer Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok and Mathew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

Hundreds of troops and police block one of Bangkok's busiest areas in order to stop a planned protest.
Calls for new election

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - In an unprecedented, three-year cyber espionage campaign, Iranian hackers created false social networking accounts and a bogus news website to spy on military and political leaders in the United States, Israel and other countries, a cyber intelligence firm said on Thursday.

ISight Partners, which uncovered the operation, said the targets include a four-star U.S. Navy admiral, U.S. lawmakers and ambassadors, and personnel from Afghanistan, Britain, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

The firm declined to identify victims and said it could not say what data had been stolen by the hackers, who were seeking credentials to access government and corporate networks, as well as intelligence on weapons systems and diplomatic negotiations. "If it's been going on for so long, clearly they have had success," iSight Executive Vice President Tiffany Jones told Reuters. The privately held company is based in Dallas, Texas and provides intelligence on cyber threats.

ISight dubbed the operation "Newscaster" because it said the Iranian hackers created six "personas" who appeared to work for a fake news site, NewsOnAir.org, which used content from the Associated Press, BBC, Reuters and other media outlets. The hackers created another eight personas who purported to work for defense contractors and other organizations, iSight said.

The hackers set up false accounts on Facebook and other social networks for these 14 personas, populated profiles with fictitious personal content, and then tried to befriend targets, according to iSight.

To build credibility, hackers approached high-value targets after establishing ties with victims' friends, colleagues, relatives and other connections over social networks including Facebook Inc , Google Inc LinkedIn Corp and Twitter Inc .

The hackers would initially send the targets content that was not malicious, such as links to news articles on NewsOnAir.org, in a bid to establish trust. Then they would send links that infected PCs with malicious software, or direct targets to web portals that ask for network log-in credentials, iSight said.

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A portion of the homepage of Newsonair.com is shown on a computer screen in Toronto, Ontario May 28, …

The hackers used the 14 personas to make connections with more than 2,000 people, the firm said, adding that it believed the group ultimately targeted several hundred individuals.

"This campaign is not loud. It is low and slow," said Jones. "They want to be stealth. They want to be under the radar."

ISight said it had alerted some victims and social networking sites as well as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and overseas authorities. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.

Facebook Inc spokesman Jay Nancarrow said his company had discovered the hacking group while investigating suspicious friend requests and other activity on its website.

"We removed all of the offending profiles we found to be associated with the fake NewsOnAir organization and we have used this case to further refine our systems that catch fake accounts," Nancarrow said.

LinkedIn spokesman Doug Madey said the site was investigating the report, though none of the fake profiles were currently active.

Twitter declined to comment. Google did not respond to a request for comment.

POST-STUXNET ERA

ISight disclosed its findings as evidence emerges that Iranian hackers are becoming increasingly aggressive in the wake of the 2010 Stuxnet computer virus attack on Tehran's nuclear program, widely believed to have been launched by the United States and Israel.

ISight said it could not ascertain whether the hackers were tied to Tehran, though it believed they were supported by a nation state because of the operation's complexity.

The firm said NewsOnAir.org was registered in Tehran and likely hosted in Iran. The Persian term "Parastoo" was used as a password for malware associated with the group, which appeared to work during business hours in Tehran, according to iSight.

Among the 14 false personas were reporters for NewsOnAir, including one with the same name as a Reuters journalist in Washington; six employees who purportedly worked for defense contractors; a systems administrator with the U.S. Navy; and an accountant working for a payment processor.

A spokesman for Thomson Reuters Corp, which owns Reuters, declined to comment.

Chris Hadnagy, author of "Unmasking the Social Engineer," said Newscaster was by far the most sophisticated hacking campaign involving social networking sites that has been uncovered so far. "We're going to see more and more of this vector being used. It is probably a lot deeper than we realize right now," said Hadnagy, who runs a website, www.social-engineer.com.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

Iranian hackers targeted U.S. government officials by using a phony news site and false social media accounts.
Different personas

Washington (AFP) - The White House expressed concern Thursday that pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine were using advanced weapons "from the outside" after they shot down an army helicopter killing 12 soldiers.

The downing of the aircraft came amid escalating clashes between Kiev's forces and separatists in the eastern part of the country, following the election win of chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko.

"We are disturbed by the ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine, including reports that separatists have shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

"Now we cannot yet verify the details of these reports, but we are concerned that this indicates separatists continue to have access to advanced weaponry and other assistance from the outside," Carney added, again hinting that Russia was boosting the separatist forces.

Moscow has consistently denied accusations of providing assistance to the pro-Russia separatists.

Secretary of State John Kerry phoned his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday to voice concern about reports of foreign fighters "crossing the border from Russia into Ukraine, particularly reports of Chechen fighters," the State Department said.

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Pro-Russian fighters stand in a street in central Donetsk, Ukraine, on May 29, 2014 (AFP Photo/Fabio …

"He pressed Foreign Minister Lavrov to end all support for separatists, denounce their actions and call on them to lay down their arms," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, adding that "de-escalation is the proper path forward, but many challenges remain on the ground."

The Mi-8 helicopter gunship was shot out of the sky with a sophisticated surface-to-air missile. Among the dead was a Ukrainian general.

Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said the weapon used was a Russian man-portable air defense system.

As well as hinting at Russian assistance, Carney voiced concern for a team of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observers being held by separatists in the city of Slavyansk.

"It is unacceptable for observers to be detained, and they should be released immediately. We urge Russia to use its influence with these groups to get them to release the observers, disarm and participate in a political process," Carney said.

Separatists confirmed that they detained the four observers, who have been missing since Monday.

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (AP) — U.S. defense officials said Thursday that Russia has pulled most of its forces away from the Ukraine border, a withdrawal that the U.S. has been demanding for weeks.

They said about seven battalions remained, amounting to a couple of thousand troops. U.S. officials had estimated as many as 40,000 Russian forces had been aligned along the border with a restive eastern Ukraine that has been wracked with violence between government security forces and pro-Russian separatists.

The defense officials spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the precise numbers.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel didn't provide any details to reporters traveling with him at the start of a 12-day overseas trip, but he called the withdrawal promising.

"They are not where they need to be and won't be until all of their troops that they positioned along that border a couple of months ago are gone," Hagel said.

"We do know that thousands of Russian troops have been pulled back and are moving away. But we also know that there are still thousands of Russian troops still there that have not yet moved," Hagel said.

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A pro-Russian rebel stretches while manning a barricade near the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) in …

Hagel said he has not spoken to his Russian counterpart about the withdrawal.

Hagel was among Obama administration officials who expressed new concerns Thursday about rising violence in eastern Ukraine, including the downing of a military helicopter by pro-Russian rebels.

The White House and State Department both said a de-escalation of the crisis was imperative and called on Russia to exert pressure on the separatists to get them to end the fighting and release a group of international monitors who have been detained in eastern Ukraine since earlier this week.

"We are disturbed by the ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine," presidential spokesman Jay Carney said at the White House. While the U.S. has not been able to verify what happened to the helicopter, he said, "We are concerned that this indicates separatists continue to have access to advanced weaponry and other assistance from the outside."

Ukraine's acting president said earlier Thursday that 12 troops died when rebels shot down a military helicopter in Slovyansk using a portable air defense missile.

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Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel waves as he boards his plane before his departure at Joint Base Elmend …

Even before the incident, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on Wednesday to reiterate U.S. concerns about the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, the State Department said.

Kerry raised with Lavrov reports of Chechen fighters crossing into Ukraine to join the separatists, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at the State Department.

Kerry "pressed Foreign Minister Lavrov to end all support for separatists, denounce their actions and call on them to lay down their arms," she said.

"Our broad view, as you know, is that de-escalation is the proper path forward," Psaki added, although she said she was not aware of concerns that Ukrainian security forces were using disproportionate means to quell the fighting as some Russians have alleged.

Carney and Psaki also said it was unacceptable that insurgents have detained four observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They demanded their immediate release.

The U.S. has called on Russia repeatedly to help de-escalate tensions in Ukraine, including withdrawing troops massed near Ukraine.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.

Most Russian troops leave Ukraine border

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel calls the move promising, but says all Russian forces must depart.
U.S. 'disturbed' by new violence