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The rapid and ongoing growth of human population and footprint are transforming the remaining expanses of natural vegetation, shrinking the habitat of most other species, inducing widespread population declines, and increasing the global risk of species extinction.

The seminar presents an update of the conservation status, recent and projected trends, and future scenarios for the global mammalian biodiversity.

While conservation action has achieved some successes, only societal changes happen at a scale that matches the scale of impacts.

According to scenarios, societal changes may have the potential to slow or revert the current declines, but only under the most optimistic assumptions on mammals' plasticity and adaptability in responding to change.

Carlo Rondinini is a Research Scientist at Sapienza University of Rome and leading expert in global conservation priority setting and biodiversity scenarios. For the last 20 years he has worked with GOs and NGOs to map species distributions, assess extinction risk, set conservation targets and identify priority conservation areas for vertebrate species at the national, regional and global scale. Carlo coordinates the Global Mammal Assessment - maintaining up-to-date information on mammal extinction risk as part of the IUCN Red List Partnership - and is one of the Editors of the journal Conservation Biology.

CSIRO Land, Water and Ecosystems seminar series. All welcome.