Humans have caused pervasive wildlife habitat loss by transforming most of the Earth's terrestrial surface, while unexpectedly limited species have consequently gone extinct. The concept of time‐lagged extinction (i.e., an extinction debt) potentially explains this paradox, but the starting time of the process is difficult to estimate. Herein, by projecting extinction risk backward onto human perturbation time series, we applied a statistical framework to examine extinction debt for 8435 terrestrial avian species. The results suggested that the modern extinction risk induced by anthropogenic terrestrial land modification began 150 years ago, aligning with the acceleration of human activities since the Second Industrial Revolution. Intriguingly, we found a reversal of anthropogenic effects on extinction risk over the mid‐20th century, perhaps driven by spatiotemporal contrasts in anthropogenic perturbations between developed and developing areas. These findings indicate the need for proactive conservation and highlight the role of ecosystem restoration in the potential repayment of extinction debt.

中文翻译：

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长达 150 年的鸟类灭绝债务预示着全球物种危机，并凸显了保护机遇


人类通过改变地球的大部分陆地表面，造成了普遍的野生动物栖息地丧失，而出乎意料的有限物种也因此灭绝了。时间滞后灭绝（即灭绝债务）的概念可能解释了这个悖论，但这个过程的开始时间很难估计。在此，通过将灭绝风险向后投影到人类扰动时间序列上，我们应用了一个统计框架来检查 8435 个陆生鸟类物种的灭绝债务。结果表明，人为陆地改造引起的现代灭绝风险始于 150 年前，与第二次工业革命以来人类活动的加速一致。有趣的是，我们发现在 20 世纪中叶，人为因素对灭绝风险的影响发生了逆转，这可能是由发达地区和发展中地区之间人为扰动的时空对比所驱动的。这些发现表明了主动保护的必要性，并强调了生态系统恢复在偿还灭绝债务方面的作用。