Cumulative environmental impacts and extinction risk of Brazilian carnivores

Abstract

Mammalian carnivores are crucial bioindicators of environmental impacts. Threats to the Brazilian carnivores identified by the national evaluation of extinction risk were reviewed in this article. Native vegetation suppression, road and hydroelectric dam building, mining and petrol extraction are the main threats and are all subjected to laws that require environmental licensing, which should be a safeguard that measures would be adopted to mitigate their negative impacts; however, almost half of the carnivore species are under some degree of extinction threat. This evidences the need for effective enforcement of environmental legislations and for considering cumulative and indirect effects of human activities on carnivore populations. Therefore, the current trends of changes in Brazilian environmental legislation should be reversed in order to avoid biodiversity loss.