Biodiversity hotspot

A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region that is both a significant reservoir of biodiversity and is threatened with destruction. The biodiversity hotspots were originally identified by Dr. Norman Myers in two articles in The Environmentalist (1998 & 1990) and revised in an article in the journal Nature (2000). The term biodiversity hotspot specifically refers to 25 biologically rich areas around the world that have lost at least 70% of their original habitat. The remaining natural habitat in these biodiversity hotspots amounts to just 1.4 percent of the land surface of the planet, yet supports nearly 60 percent of the world's plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species.

February 2, 2005 : Conservationists named 9 new "Biodiversity Hotspots" In a recent press release, Conservation International updated the list with 9 new hotspots, although there has been no peer review of this revision and these new hotspots are still questioned by some. The list of authors for this new scientific assessment noticeably lacked the original author of the hotspot idea.

The decision by groups like Conservation International to focus on biodiversity hotspots is similar to World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Global 200 initiative, which identifies over 200 ecoregions as priorities for conservation of biodiversity. Both are scientific initiatives that try to quantify species diversity, and the two schemes both target many of the same regions. The main differences are in the scale of the regions—the biodiversity hotspots tend to be larger regions, and generally include multiple WWF ecoregions—and CI's focus on terrestrial ecoregions, while the WWF scheme includes freshwater and marine ecoregions as well.

A detailed map prepared by National Geographic of the hotspots and individual endangered fauna details is provided at Conservation International's Website.

Critiques of Hotspots

A fundamental omission in the hotspot definition is the concept of cost. The purpose of biodiversity hotspots is not simply to identify regions that are of high biodiversity value, but also to direct available funding to a small amount of the world's land area. This was one of the main selling points in the initial exposition of the idea - that a majority of the world's biodiversity could be protected by conserving a small amount of land. Hotspots consequently became known as a "silver bullet solution".

The 34 biodiversity hotspots by region

North and Central America

South America

Europe and Central Asia

Caucasus
Irano-Anatolian
Mediterranean Basin
Mountains of Central Asia

Africa

Asia-Pacific

External links

Conservation International's Biodiversity Hotspots project

Biodiversity hotspots

Hotspot de biodiversidade

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Biodiversity hotspot

Critiques of Hotspots

The 34 biodiversity hotspots by region

External links