QUANTIFYING THREATS TO IMPERILED SPECIES IN THE UNITED STATES

Biologists are nearly unanimous in their belief that humanity is in the process of extirpating a significant portion of the earth's spe­ cies. The ways in which we are doing so reflect the magnitude and scale of human enterprise. Everything from highway construction to cattle ranch­ ing to leaky bait buckets has been implicated in the demise or endan­ germent of particular species. Ac­ cording to Wilson (1992), most of these activities fall into four major categories, which he terms "the mind­ less horsemen of the environmental apocalypse": overexploitation, habi­ tat destruction, the introduction of non-native (alien) species, and the spread of diseases carried by alien species. To these categories may be added a fifth, pollution, although it can also be considered a form of habitat destruction. Surprisingly, there have been reIa­ tively few analyses of the extent to which each of these factors-much less the more specific deeds encomDavid S. Wilcove is a senior ecologist at the Environmental Defense Fund, Wash­ ington, DC 20009. David Rothstein re­ ceived his J.D. in 1997 from Northeastern

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