**Earth has experienced five major mass extinctions, each wiping out a significant portion of life:
**The current extinction rate is 100–1,000 times higher than the natural background rate.
Human Causes: Deforestation & Habitat Destruction – Clearing rainforests, urban expansion. Climate Change – Rising temperatures disrupt ecosystems. Pollution & Plastics – Toxins in air, water, and soil harm wildlife. Overfishing & Poaching – Depleting species faster than they can reproduce. Invasive Species – Human-introduced species outcompete native ones.**
Based on current ecological research and systemic risk assessments, the accelerating loss of biodiversity points toward a potential timeline for when the biosphere may lose its functional ability to support complex civilization.
Insects are declining globally at roughly 1 percent per year, leading to an expected 40 to 50 percent loss within 40 to 50 years.
Mammals have experienced an average 73 percent population decline in the last 50 years, and many large mammal populations are now below sustainable levels.
North America has lost approximately 30 percent of its birds since 1970.
Freshwater ecosystems have seen an 83 percent decline in vertebrate populations since 1970.
Forest area globally has decreased by about 10 percent since 1990, with ongoing deforestation of roughly 10 million hectares annually. Since 1750 planetary forest has been reduced by 50%.
Fish Stocks are overfished by one-third, and many large fish species have suffered population losses of 80 to 90 percent.
Coral Reefs are undergoing widespread bleaching, with 84 percent currently experiencing bleaching-level heat stress, indicating a risk of collapse within decades.
The biosphere functions through complex webs of species interactions such as pollination, predation, and nutrient cycling. As species are lost, ecological resilience diminishes, and critical thresholds may be crossed.
The Stockholm Resilience Centre’s planetary boundaries research indicates that humanity has already crossed the biodiversity integrity boundary, meaning ecosystems are functionally deteriorating. Loss of species diversity triggers cascading effects that accelerate decline.
Modeling studies suggest that if extinction rates continue at 100 to 1,000 times the natural background level, key ecosystems such as tropical rainforests and coral reefs could collapse within 50 to 100 years.
The 2019 United Nations IPBES report warns that one million species face extinction within decades, risking a collapse of global ecosystem services.
Research on ecological networks indicates that losing 20 to 40 percent of species can destabilize food webs, leading to rapid ecosystem failures within a human lifetime. These findings imply that biosphere-scale collapse will occur within 50 to 80 years if current trends persist.