title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Kasper Schmeichel was born on 5 November 1986 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is the son of Bente and former Denmark international goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel, and is of Polish descent through his paternal grandfather.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel grew up in Denmark during his early years but spent most of his childhood living in England due to his father's playing career. Kasper is a native speaker of both Danish and English, the latter of which he speaks with a Northern-English accent. He attended Hulme Hall Grammar School in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, Greater Manchester, and he also attended Saint Julian's School in Portugal while his father played for Sporting CP in Lisbon. When Alex Bruce, son of Kasper's father's former Manchester United teammate Steve Bruce, joined Kasper at Leeds United, the move saw the two players re-unite after both had previously played football together on the streets as children after school.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel started playing organised football in Portugal in 2000, while his father was part of Sporting CP. He played one season in the Estoril youth academy, in which he managed to win a championship. Commenting on his early footballing years, Schmeichel remarked: "Before [Estoril], it wasn't that serious. I have to admit that when I was very small, football did not interest me that much. It was mostly in short periods that it was fun, and then I had enough. So it only started to take shape when I was 12-13 years old".


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: In 2001, Schmeichel moved to Denmark where he attended Oure Efterskole, an "efterskole" or voluntary independent residential school for young people finishing their primary education. Schmeichel said in an interview with "Euroman" in 2014: "At Oure, I was part of an environment and met a coach who made me want to develop even more as a goalkeeper". Schmeichel, at the time, was described as hard-working and dedicated by coach Bo Pedersen. While enrolled at Oure, Schmeichel trialled with Brøndby IF, but would instead move to Manchester City after another successful trial.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel joined Manchester City in September 2002 on a long-term contract, which covered schoolboy, scholar and professional terms. He joined League Two side Darlington on a loan deal in January 2006, where he made his professional first-team debut against Peterborough United at the Darlington Arena on 14 January 2006. Darlington won the game 2–1, with Schmeichel conceding a goal to Peterborough striker James Quinn. He gained his first clean sheet three days later against Grimsby Town. He made two further appearances before returning to Manchester City.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: One month after returning to Manchester City he was loaned out again, this time to Bury in February, where he made 15 appearances in a three-month loan spell. He returned to Bury for a further three months the following season.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel joined Scottish Premier League side Falkirk on loan from January 2007 until the end of the 2006–07 season. He was named man of the match against Rangers on 18 February 2007. He also saved a Craig Beattie penalty in a 1–0 win over Celtic on 18 March 2007. He revealed in May he would have liked his loan at Falkirk extended, and the club expressed an interest in signing him.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel made his Manchester City debut against West Ham United in August 2007. He played against City's rivals and his boyhood team Manchester United on 19 August 2007 and kept a clean sheet in City's 1–0 home win. Schmeichel saved a penalty from Arsenal's Robin van Persie on 25 August 2007 at the Emirates Stadium. Despite City losing 1–0 to Arsenal he was named man of the match. He played the first seven of Manchester City's games in the 2007–08 Premier League, keeping clean sheets against Manchester United, West Ham, Aston Villa and Derby County, conceding only five goals.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: He signed a new four-year deal with City in September 2007. This was then followed up with an agreement to go on a one-month loan with Championship side Cardiff City on 25 October 2007. He made his debut for Cardiff on 27 October 2007 in a 1–1 draw with Scunthorpe United. He was named 2007 Danish Under-21 Talent of the Year.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Towards the end of the loan spell, Schmeichel requested that he would be allowed to stay on at Cardiff for a longer period and on 22 November, the loan spell was extended until the new year, with manager Sven-Göran Eriksson stating that he could possibly stay at the club for the rest of the season providing Manchester City do not suffer an injury crisis. After Eriksson named Joe Hart as the number one goalkeeper at Manchester City, however, Andreas Isaksson requested a transfer. This meant that Eriksson would not allow Cardiff to keep Schmeichel after his initial loan period ended on 2 January. On 31 December, Eriksson threw Cardiff a lifeline by opening talks for Schmeichel to stay at Ninian Park. Schmeichel would be allowed to stay for two more matches should Isaksson not move until late in the January transfer window. Schmeichel had stated he would like to play for Cardiff again in the future. Schmeichel, however, returned to Eastlands the day after his initial loan expired.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: He joined Coventry City on loan until the end of the season on 13 March. Towards the end of the season, his father, Peter Schmeichel, commented during a TV interview that his son was not happy at Manchester City and was set to leave following the end of the season.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Despite wanting to leave, Schmeichel returned to the City of Manchester Stadium at the end of the season and changed to the number 16 shirt. He repeatedly stated that he wanted to leave City and regretted signing a four-year contract.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 16 November, Schmeichel entered a game as a substitute after Joe Hart injured his ankle in the 14th minute. City went on to a 2–2 result with Hull City. In December 2008, Schmeichel played his last game for Manchester City in a UEFA Cup match against Racing de Santander.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 14 August 2009, Schmeichel signed for League Two side Notts County in a deal that is believed to have broken the club's previous transfer record. The transfer reunited Schmeichel with his former Manchester City manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson, who had recently been appointed director of football for Notts. He was the highest paid player at the club, earning £1 million annually. He made his debut on 22 August and kept a clean sheet in the side's 3–0 win against Dagenham & Redbridge. In September 2009, Schmeichel almost scored with an audacious overhead kick against Morecambe when he came up from a corner late on in the game.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: A fine string of performances in October earned Schmeichel the Player of the Month award. During Schmeichel's stay at The Magpies, the club conceded only 0.67 goals per League 2 match (29 goals conceded in 43 league appearances). Schmeichel's clean-sheets-to-game-ratio at Notts County was an impressive 55.8 percent (24 out of 43 league appearances). On 27 April, Schmeichel and Notts County secured the 2009–10 League Two title and promotion to League One with a 5–0 win against already relegated Darlington. Shortly before the game, it was announced that Notts County agreed to release Schmeichel at the end of the season despite having four years left on his contract. The reasoning behind this was financial: Schmeichel earned a reported £15,000 per week, having been signed during the brief ownership period of high-spending Munto Finance in the summer 2009. Schmeichel agreed to forgo all his future wages, something which chairman Ray Trew described as "a huge concession by such a young man".


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 27 May 2010, having been linked with both Premier League and Bundesliga clubs, Schmeichel signed a two-year contract with Leeds United, joining the club on 1 July 2010. Schmeichel was given the number 1 shirt at Leeds for the 2010–11 season and was made Leeds' first choice goalkeeper for the forthcoming season, ahead of Shane Higgs. He made his debut for the club on Saturday 7 August 2010 in Leeds' opening Football League Championship match against Derby County. Despite Leeds losing 2–1, Schmeichel put in an impressive performance, making several crucial saves during the match. After a string of impressive games for Leeds, Schmeichel was nominated for the August Championship Player of the Month award, but lost out to Queens Park Rangers winger Adel Taarabt. Schmeichel, however, did win Sky Sports Championship Player of the Month award for August.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: After picking up a tendon injury in his foot, Schmeichel missed the game against Swansea City and was ruled out of Leeds' next few games. While out injured, Schmeichel appeared on "Soccer AM" as one of the guests on the show. After just under two months out, Schmeichel returned to the Leeds starting line-up against Cardiff City. He was set to play against Coventry City on 6 November, but due to the birth of his first child the night before, he missed the game.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 8 January 2011, Schmeichel helped Leeds earn a 1–1 draw against Arsenal in the FA Cup Third Round match at the Emirates Stadium. After the match, Arsenal captain Cesc Fàbregas commented that Schmeichel should have received the match ball for his performance. Although Leeds lost the replay 3–1, Schmeichel produced another impressive display (nearly scoring himself via a header) and he was subsequently named player of the FA Cup Third Round.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 27 June 2011, Leeds announced they had accepted an undisclosed bid for him from Leicester City. With Schmeichel wanting to stay at Leeds for the remainder of his contract, he admitted that the decision to sell him was a real shock. However, Schmeichel said that moving to Leeds was the wrong move for him, particularly because he was made to feel unwelcome at the club because of his father's history.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 27 June 2011, Schmeichel was officially confirmed as a Leicester player, signing a three-year deal for an undisclosed fee that reunited him for a second time with his former Manchester City and Notts County manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: In the first month of the season, Schmeichel was shown a seemingly needless red card in the 79th minute of Leicester's away game to Nottingham Forest on 20 August 2011 after receiving two yellow cards for "unsporting conduct". He received the first card for moving the ball from the penalty spot as Forest's Lewis McGugan was about to take a kick, then received his second for throwing the ball away after the spot kick was successfully converted. After the match, Schmeichel apologized, claiming his back was turned to the referee so did not know he had received the first of the yellow cards. "I didn't know I had been booked as I had my back to the ref otherwise I would never have done that," he said on his personal Twitter page. Despite this, Schmeichel's performances for Leicester quickly began earning him plaudits, with his then manager Sven-Göran Eriksson comparing him with England number 1 goalkeeper Joe Hart, and teammate and former England international Paul Konchesky describing him as "one of the best [goalkeepers] he has ever played with". A short-distant reaction save against Portsmouth in November 2011, in particular, earnt Schmeichel praise and was described by Portsmouth manager Michael Appleton as "one of the best saves I have seen in a very long time". and by Leicester manager Nigel Pearson as "a world-class, outstanding save and was very important at that point of the game".


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel played a total of 52 games overall, making 17 clean sheets and saving four penalties. His performances in the 2011–12 season earned him the club's Player of the Year and Players' Player of the Year awards on 30 April.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel's form in the first half of the 2012–13 season surpassed that of the previous season, keeping 12 clean sheets in 28 games, the most in the league as the Foxes sat second in the table, such performances earning him links with La Liga giants Real Madrid and also leading to his first senior Denmark cap. A particular highlight was a spectacular save against Blackburn Rovers in February. On 16 April 2013, he made his 100th Leicester appearance in a 3–2 win over Bolton Wanderers. Schmeichel's performances earned him a place in the 2012–13 Championship PFA Team of the Year, alongside club captain Wes Morgan.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: During the 2013–14 season, Schmeichel kept nine clean sheets during a 19-game unbeaten run spanning from December to April to help guarantee Leicester promotion from the Championship with six games to spare. Schmeichel's high quality performances once again led to him being courted by some of world football's giants, with both Manchester United and Milan being linked with moves for the Danish international during the January transfer window.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: In March, TV footage appeared to support Schmeichel's claim that he had scored what would have been the first goal of his career, when Leicester equalised, in injury time, against Yeovil Town. However, the match officials ruled that his header had not crossed the line and the goal was officially credited to Chris Wood, who followed up to put the ball in the net.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: At the end of the 2013–14 season, it was announced that Schmeichel had signed a four-year contract extension until the summer of 2018 with Leicester.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel remained the first choice goalkeeper for Leicester's return to the Premier League, including playing the full 90 minutes in the 5–3 victory against Manchester United on 21 September 2014. In December 2014, Schmeichel suffered a broken metatarsal in training, ruling him out for what was thought at the time to be up to six weeks. While he was out, Leicester signed goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer as a replacement. Schmeichel eventually returned from injury three months later on 21 March 2015, and beat Schwarzer to play in the 4–3 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur. Clean sheets against Swansea City and Burnley as Leicester won four out of five games in April earned Schmeichel a nomination for the Premier League Player of the Month award. After securing Premier League safety following a goalless draw with Sunderland on 16 May, Schmeichel stated his belief that manager Nigel Pearson should win Manager of the Season and that Pearson is the best manager Schmeichel has played for. Pearson, however, was sacked in the off-season.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Under Pearson's replacement, Claudio Ranieri, Leicester sat top of the table on Christmas Day. Despite their great start, the team did not keep a clean sheet in their first nine games, prompting Ranieri to offer to buy the squad pizza for their first. The team finally managed their first clean sheet of the season in their tenth game, against Crystal Palace. The team improved defensively, and Schmeichel kept his 12th clean sheet of the season in the reverse fixture against Palace on 19 March. On 2 May 2016, he won the Premier League title at 29 years of age, the same age and same calendar day when his father won Manchester United's first such title in 1993. On both occasions, the respective teams (Manchester United and Leicester City) clinched the titles by nearest rivals (Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur) not winning. The Schmeichels became the only biological father and son to have both won the Premier League, as well as doing so playing in the same position.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Despite rumours of a move away after playing a crucial role in Leicester City's title in the 2015–16 season, on 6 August 2016, Schmeichel signed a new five-year contract until 2021. Schmeichel made his first appearance of the season in FA Community Shield against the FA Cup winners, Manchester United, and the match ended in a 2–1 defeat for the reigning champions. At the opening of the Premier League, Schmeichel continued his role in the goal ahead of new signing, Ron-Robert Zieler against newly promoted Hull City. Schmeichel was beaten twice as Hull City went on to beat the champions 2–1. After missing three games in September, including a midweek EFL Cup tie against Chelsea, with a minor groin injury, Schmeichel sustained a hand fracture in the first half of a Champions League match at F.C. Copenhagen on 2 November. Despite the injury, Schmeichel finished the game, seeing out a 0–0 draw by making a late save of Andreas Cornelius for his fourth Champions League clean sheet in four matches. After undergoing surgery two days later, Schmeichel was expected to miss six weeks of action, with Zieler taking his place in goal.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 24 February 2017, reports emerged alleging that Schmeichel was among several teammates who met with chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha following their 2–1 Champions League defeat at Sevilla on 22 February, which led to manager Claudio Ranieri being sacked. Schmeichel denied the claims, describing them as "very hurtful".


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: In Leicester's first Champions League campaign, Schmeichel saved a penalty in each leg of the last 16 tie with Sevilla – from Joaquín Correa and Steven Nzonzi respectively – as the Foxes advanced 3–2 on aggregate.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 26 August 2017, Schmeichel saved a Romelu Lukaku penalty away at Manchester United in the 53rd minute, with the score at 0–0. Leicester would go on to lose the game 2–0. On 31 March 2018, Schmeichel saved a penalty kick in a 2–0 away win over Brighton, the same number his father saved during his time in the competition (three out of 21 Premier League penalties saved). On 14 April 2018, Schmeichel suffered an ankle injury in the 86th minute in a 2–1 home loss against Burnley, resulting in Schmeichel missing Leicester's final five games of the 2017–18 Premier League season.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 31 August 2018, Schmeichel signed a new contract with Leicester until June 2023. Schmeichel witnessed the helicopter crash on 27 October 2018 that killed five people including Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha. Schmeichel went on to play in every Premier League game for Leicester, making his 300th league appearance for the club and helping them to a 9th-place finish.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel played in all 38 Premier League matches, in which he kept 13 clean sheets. Leicester City finished in fifth place and qualified for the next Europa League season.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 15 May 2021, Schmeichel captained Leicester City to victory over Chelsea 1–0 in the FA Cup Final to win the competition for the first time in their history, the match featuring two saves by Schmeichel that greatly contributed to his team's triumph.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 7 August 2021, Schmeichel captained Leicester City to a 1–0 victory over Manchester City in the 2021 FA Community Shield to win the competition for the second time in their history. Schmeichel also captained Leicester City to the club's first European semi final after being knocked out by Jose Mourinho's Roma in the Europa Conference League.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: While at Manchester City, Schmeichel was called up for the Denmark national under-19 team in August 2004, and made his international debut in a 0–0 draw with Northern Ireland on 2 September 2004. He went on to play eight under-19 internationals until March 2005, competing with Kenneth Stenild and Michael Tørnes for the goalkeeping spot. He was called up for the under-20 team in October 2005, but did not play for the team until October 2006, during his time at Bury. The day after his under-20 debut, Schmeichel was asked to train with the senior Denmark team and was called up as a replacement for injured Theis Rasmussen in the under-21 squad.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel was one of the leading players in the team, and was named Danish under-21 Talent of the Year in November 2007, following three clean sheets in the previous four under-21 games. He played a total 17 under-21 internationals in a row from March 2007 to October 2008, racking up seven clean sheets.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Following his strong showings for Manchester City in the early 2007–08 season, it was reported on 23 August 2007 that The Football Association (FA) were investigating Schmeichel's international status, to see if there was any chance of him foregoing his Danish international status in order to play for England. Schmeichel, however, stated that he would only ever play for Denmark.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel was called up to the Danish senior team on 13 May 2011 for the first time for the match against Iceland, but remained an unused substitute. On 29 May 2012, he was called up for UEFA Euro 2012 as a third goalkeeper after it became clear that Thomas Sørensen would miss the tournament due to an injury sustained against Brazil. Schmeichel made his senior debut in a 3–0 friendly match defeat to Macedonia at the Philip II Arena on 6 February 2013.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 15 October 2013, Schmeichel had his first ever senior level game in his native Denmark, when he held an easy clean sheet in Denmark's 6–0 win against Malta in the last 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifier. Denmark were eventually runners-up in the group, finishing six points behind Italy, but they did not progress to the play-offs for the finals as they were the lowest-ranked team of the nine runners-up.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 5 March 2014, Schmeichel received his third cap for Denmark in their 1–0 friendly defeat against England at Wembley Stadium. Despite defeat, Schmeichel pulled off a string of impressive saves earning plaudits from the media as well as England manager Roy Hodgson.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel was selected for the Danish squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, where he started in three group stage matches. His clean sheet in the opening match contributed to a Man of the Match award and helped Schmeichel set a new record for minutes without conceding a goal for Denmark, surpassing his father's record. During the Round of 16 match against Croatia, Schmeichel was named Man of the Match after saving a penalty-kick taken by Luka Modrić in extra-time and two penalties during the subsequent shootout, although his opposing counterpart Danijel Subašić saved three penalties in that shootout to eliminate Denmark.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: On 7 July 2021, in the semi-finals of UEFA Euro 2020 against England at Wembley Stadium, Schmeichel saved a penalty from Harry Kane in extra-time, who subsequently scored from the rebound, which proved to be the decisive goal as England prevailed 2–1.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel is married to Stine Gyldenbrand. Together, they have three children: a son born in 2010, a daughter born in 2012, and a second daughter born in 2021.


title: Kasper Schmeichel

text: Schmeichel signed an ambassadorial deal with Precision Goalkeeping on 17 August 2010 which will include the release of the "Schmeichology" Goalkeeping Range.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Liliane Rudabet Gloria Elsveta "Leelee" Sobieski (born June 10, 1983) is an American artist and former actress. She achieved fame in her teens with roles in films such as "Deep Impact", "Eyes Wide Shut", "Joy Ride", "Here on Earth", and "The Glass House". She received Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for her portrayal of the title character in the television film "Joan of Arc" and a further Golden Globe nomination for her performance in the miniseries "Uprising".


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Sobieski continued to work in films and on television until retiring in 2012, after which she focused on her art career.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Sobieski was born in New York City. Her mother, Elizabeth Sobieski (née Salomon), is an American film producer and screenwriter who also works as Sobieski's manager, and her father, , is a French-born painter and former actor of Polish and Swiss descent. Her maternal grandfather, United States Navy Captain Robert Salomon, was Jewish. Her maternal grandmother was of Ashkenazi Jewish and one quarter Dutch descent. Sobieski grew up in a "pan-religious" family; she has said that she is "proud of [her] melting pot roots". Her younger brother is Robert "Roby" Sobieski.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Sobieski's first name, Liliane, was the name of her paternal grandmother. One of her middle names, Elsveta, is derived from her mother's name, Elizabeth.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: She graduated from Trevor Day School in 2001 and studied literature and fine art at Brown University but did not graduate.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Sobieski was first noticed by a talent scout in the cafeteria of a New York City private school. That encounter led to her audition for the role of Claudia in "Interview with the Vampire" (1994), a role that ultimately went to Kirsten Dunst. Sobieski portrayed the character of Anna Yates in the 1994 TV movie "Reunion" starring Marlo Thomas. Next, she played a lead role in "A Horse for Danny", a 1995 made-for-television film. In 1997, she snagged her first role in a studio film playing the daughter of Martin Short's character in the Tim Allen comedy "Jungle 2 Jungle". In 1999, Sobieski appeared in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut". Recalling acting alongside Tom Cruise, Sobieski stated he was "very kind and considerate with me," and says her most vivid recollection of Kubrick, who died soon after filming finished, was that he "genuinely seemed to hold something magic".


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: While still in her mid-teens, Sobieski rose to fame with her appearance in the movie "Deep Impact" (1998). The film was a major financial success, grossing over $349 million worldwide on a $75 million production budget. "Deep Impact" brought her to the attention of many casting directors. That same year Sobieski appeared in the Merchant Ivory film "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries". Sobieski's performance received praise from critics; Emanuel Levy of "Variety" wrote that "the graceful Sobieski registers strongly as a potential star, combining physical charm with technical skill." The film garnered her a Young Artist Award nomination, as well as a nomination by the Chicago Film Critics Association.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: In 1999, Sobieski was cast in a supporting role in the teen comedy feature "Never Been Kissed" starring Drew Barrymore. Her next performance in the title role of the TV movie "Joan of Arc" (1999) earned her an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe nomination, and she became the youngest actress ever to portray Joan of Arc on screen. In 2000, Sobieski played the female lead in the film "Here on Earth", for which she received a Teen Choice Award nomination. She received a second Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of Tosia Altman in the 2001 TV film "Uprising".


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: In 2001, Sobieski played the lead role in the road horror film "Joy Ride" with Paul Walker and Steve Zahn. The film received generally favorable reviews. Garth Franklin of "Dark Horizons" stated that Sobieski "does a better job than usual." That same year, she starred in the thriller "The Glass House", alongside Diane Lane. The film was panned by critics and, with little promotion, had a disappointing opening weekend gross of just under $6 million. Sobieski's performance in the 2001 low-budget drama "My First Mister" was praised by critics, with Pete Croatto of "Filmcritic.com" writing that, "As for Sobieski, who I've always liked, she does another fine job. This time it's with a shaky character – the troubled Goth chick... [but] Sobieski finds her character's human touch and runs with it."


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Sobieski landed a starring role in the independent film "L'Idole" (2002), which opened at the Toronto International Film Festival. She then starred alongside John Cusack in the drama feature "Max", as the mistress of a Jewish art dealer who mentors a young Adolf Hitler. Next, she portrayed the character of Cecile in the miniseries "Les Liaisons dangereuses" (2003) with Catherine Deneuve and Rupert Everett, an adaptation of Laclos's classic novel of sexual intrigue which made use of Sobieski's fluency in French. She portrayed the role of Deianira in "Hercules", a 2005 television miniseries.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: The experimental-indie film "Lying", starring Sobieski alongside Chloë Sevigny and Jena Malone, debuted at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, followed by a limited release in the United States in 2008. She next starred in the American drama "Heavens Fall" as one of several young women who accuse nine black youths of rape in the segregated South. That same year, she appeared in the horror film "In a Dark Place" as well as the remake of "The Wicker Man" starring Nicolas Cage.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: The independent comedy film "Walk All over Me", in which Sobieski plays a woman who becomes a dominatrix, premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival and was later screened at several other film festivals. Her next major motion picture, the thriller "88 Minutes" co-starring Al Pacino and Alicia Witt, opened on April 18, 2008, in the United States, after a release in various other countries the previous year. Though panned by critics, the film was a minor success at the box office, earning more than $32 million worldwide.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: In January 2008, Sobieski appeared in "", a fantasy film inspired by the "Dungeon Siege" video game series. For her performances in both "88 Minutes" and "A Dungeon Siege Tale", she received a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Supporting Actress. Sobieski next reteamed with her "Joy Ride" co-star Steve Zahn in the direct-to-video film "Night Train". In the film, Sobieski plays Chloe, a potentially lethal medical student who has a fateful encounter with two other strangers aboard a Polar Express-like train.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: In 2009, Sobieski had a small role in the biographical crime drama "Public Enemies". In June 2010, she starred alongside Denise Richards and Jamie Kennedy in the film "Finding Bliss", a romantic comedy about a straitlaced aspiring filmmaker who is forced to go to work for a producer of adult films. She made a guest appearance in the television series "Drop Dead Diva" in the episode "A Mother's Secret". Sobieski also played a lead role in the 2010 drama thriller "Acts of Violence", the story of a man on a mission of vengeance after his wife is raped.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Sobieski joined the cast of the comedy-drama "The Last Film Festival", co-starring Dennis Hopper, Jacqueline Bisset and Chris Kattan. Filmed in Queens in 2009, the movie was released theatrically in Los Angeles on September 30, 2016.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Sobieski guest-starred in a January 2011 episode of "The Good Wife", playing the girlfriend of one of Lockhart-Gardner-Bond's most influential clients who is accused of using prescription stimulants. She starred in the CBS drama "NYC 22" as a rookie New York City police officer, and landed the role of Abby Gibbons in the movie "Branded", released in 2012.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: She began her art career using her married name Leelee Kimmel. She paints and sculpts abstract work, and works in VR, using Google Tilt Brush. She uses bright colors, abstracted and textured shapes floating on either a large black or white background.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Her 2018 solo exhibit debut, “Channels,” opened at the Journal Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and garnered positive reviews. "Vogue" said the exhibit and her work "warrants serious merit". She then debuted her first UK exhibit titled “Wormhole” at the Simon Lee Gallery in London. In this latest installment, she presents large-scale abstract paintings that are confrontational in both colour and dimension, exploring themes of creation and destruction. “Kimmel’s world is very much her own – a heady mix of daftness and profundity – and a space that’s potentially fascinating, yet disorientating for those unfamiliar with it. Such are the worlds she builds in her paintings, too, and which expand beyond the canvas into gloriously gelatinous sculptures and a pioneering VR piece.” Interview Magazine says, "Leelee Kimmel has always been an artist."


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: In January 2009, Sobieski began dating fashion designer Adam John Kimmel, the son of American real estate developer Martin Kimmel and grandson of American boat racer and designer Donald Aronow. They were engaged on May 28, 2009, and it was made public on June 23, 2009, when fans at the premiere of "Public Enemies" spotted Sobieski wearing an engagement ring. The couple officially announced their engagement on July 17, 2009. Their daughter was born in December 2009 and their son was born in August 2014. They reside in Red Hook, Brooklyn.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: Sobieski, in a 2001 interview with IGN, expressed her thoughts about whether the movies she was making were escapist fare, or that they had a deeper message for society,


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: "Joy Ride" isn't a film you would make a statement with. It's a fun, jump out of life film. That's great. I love those films. Those films are great in times like these too. You can make a point with a film and help society or not. Take a film like "Bulworth", a fantastic film. There are certain films like that, that can appeal to everybody and have a message in it and that's really great.


title: Leelee Sobieski

text: In 2016, Sobieski confirmed "I don't do movie stuff anymore." Commenting on the reasons for her early retirement to "Us Weekly", Sobieski said, "I am just focused on my kids. I think that's mainly why I stopped ... Also, ninety percent of acting roles involve so much sexual stuff with other people, and I don't want to do that."


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, known as Pretty Little Liars: Summer School for its second season, is an American slasher teen drama mystery streaming television series created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring for HBO Max. It is the fourth television series in the "Pretty Little Liars" franchise, which is based on the novel series written by Sara Shepard, and set within the same continuity as the previous series. The series features an ensemble cast, headed by Bailee Madison, Chandler Kinney, Zaria, Malia Pyles, and Maia Reficco.


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: Warner Bros. announced the series's development with Aguirre-Sacasa as showrunner in September 2020. It was given a straight-to-series order by HBO Max at the end of the same month. Filming took place in New York during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the first series in the franchise to not be broadcast on ABC Family/Freeform and to be carried on a streaming television service.


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: "Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin" premiered on July 28, 2022. In September 2022, the series was renewed for a second season, retitled as "Pretty Little Liars: Summer School".


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: The slasher series follows the lives of a group of teenage girls who live in Millwood, Pennsylvania, after receiving terrifying and cryptic messages from a mysterious assailant named "A", holding them responsible for something tragic that their mothers did that resulted in the death of a classmate 22 years earlier. The girls are forced to team up to figure out what happened during the year of 1999 and what roles their mothers played that resulted in the tragedy.


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: On September 2, 2020, it was announced that a new "Pretty Little Liars" series was in development at Warner Bros., with "Riverdale" creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa taking over as showrunner from I. Marlene King. "Original Sin" takes place within the same continuity as the previous television series, but follows new characters and storylines in a new setting.


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: On September 24, 2020, HBO Max gave the series a direct-to-series order of 10-episodes and was named "Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin", with Aguirre-Sacasa teaming up with Lindsay Calhoon Bring to develop the series. Aguirre-Sacasa also executive produces the series alongside King, Leslie Morgenstein and Gina Girolamo. Production companies involved with the series are Muckle Man Productions, Alloy Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Television.


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: On September 7, 2022, HBO Max renewed the series for a second season, retitled as "Pretty Little Liars: Summer School".


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: In July 2021, Chandler Kinney, Maia Reficco, and Bailee Madison were cast on starring roles. In August 2021, Zaria, Malia Pyles, Alex Aiono, Mallory Bechtel, and Eric Johnson joined the main cast. In September 2021, Carson Rowland, Jordan Gonzalez, Ben Cook, Elias Kacavas, Benton Greene, Lea Salonga, Sharon Leal, Carly Pope, Elena Goode, and Zakiya Young were cast in recurring roles. In November 2021, Cristala Carter, Derek Klena, Kate Jennings Grant, Robert Stanton, Jennifer Ferrin, Lilla Crawford, Brian Altemus, Anthony Ordonez, and Jeffrey Bean joined the cast in recurring capacities. In December 2021, Ava DeMary, Kristen Maxwell, and Gabriella Pizzolo were cast in recurring roles. In November 2022, Gonzalez was promoted as a series regular for the second season.


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: The series was set to film at Upriver Studios in Saugerties, New York, in mid to late 2021. Filming began on August 23, 2021, in the city of Hudson, New York, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming wrapped on May 2, 2022.


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: Film composer Joseph Bishara was hired to do the series' score. He is known for his work in horror movies, including the "Insidious" film series and "The Conjuring" franchise. A remix version of "Secret" by the Pierces appeared in the opening sequence. The original song was previously used as the opening theme in the original "Pretty Little Liars", while "" used a cover version by Denmark + Winter.


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: The series premiered on July 28, 2022, with the first three episodes available, followed by two more episodes each on August 4 and 11, and then the final three episodes on August 18.


title: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

text: "Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin" was met with a very positive response to critical acclaim from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an 88% approval rating with an average rating of 6.9/10, based on 17 critical reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Boasting a tantalizing new mystery along with a refreshingly grounded crop of pretty little liars, "Original Sin" is a gossipy good time." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 82 out of 100 based on 5 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: KJ Apa

text: Savae Keneti James Fitzgerald Apa, Moata'a (born 17 June 1997) is a New Zealand actor, singer and musician. He has received various accolades, including a Saturn Award and nominations for an MTV Movie & TV Award, two People's Choice Awards and two Teen Choice Awards, and was appointed the matai title of "Savae" chief of his village Moata'a in 2022.


title: KJ Apa

text: He began acting playing Kane Jenkins in the New Zealand primetime soap opera "Shortland Street" from 2013 to 2015. In 2017, Apa was cast in the lead role of Archie Andrews in the CW drama series "Riverdale". In film, Apa has starred in "A Dog's Purpose" (2017), "The Hate U Give" (2018) and "I Still Believe" (2020). In 2021, he released his debut solo album, the indie folk-rock album "Clocks", which received some attention on Spotify and TikTok.


title: KJ Apa

text: Apa was born on 17 June 1997 at Waitakere Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, the son of Tupa'i and Tessa Apa (née Callander). His father is Samoan and a "matai" (chief) of his village in Samoa; his mother is a European New Zealander. He has two older sisters and is the nephew of former rugby union player and coach Michael Jones. He attended high school at King's College in Auckland before beginning his acting career.


title: KJ Apa

text: From 2013 to 2015, Apa starred as Kane Jenkins in the New Zealand prime-time soap opera "Shortland Street". In 2016, he was cast as Archie Andrews in the CW drama series "Riverdale", after a four-month worldwide talent search.


title: KJ Apa

text: In 2017, he starred as teenage Ethan Montgomery in the comedy-drama film "A Dog's Purpose", which was released on the same day as "Riverdale" premiered on television.


title: KJ Apa

text: His next film role was replacing Kian Lawley in the 2018 drama film "The Hate U Give". He starred as Griffin in the Netflix film "The Last Summer", which was released on 3 May 2019. He also starred as singer Jeremy Camp in the biographical romantic drama film "I Still Believe", which was released in March 2020.


title: KJ Apa

text: Apa starred in Adam Mason's critically panned 2020 thriller film "Songbird", produced by Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes. The film was accused of using the COVID-19 pandemic to create a thrill plot. In May 2021, Lionsgate Films announced he would appear in a military based drama "West Pointer".


title: KJ Apa

text: In 2021, he independently released his debut album, "Clocks", which explores the folk rock and indie genres. It gained some attention on Spotify and TikTok.


title: KJ Apa

text: Apa was involved in a minor car accident in Vancouver in September 2017, but was uninjured when the passenger side of his car hit a light pole. The late-night crash was reportedly the result of him falling asleep at the wheel after a long day of filming.


title: KJ Apa

text: Since 2020, Apa has been in a relationship with French model Clara Berry. Their child was born in September 2021.


title: KJ Apa

text: Apa was raised in a Christian family and has stated that he is a Christian. In April 2018, he publicly criticized Australian rugby player Israel Folau for claiming that it was God's plan to send gay people to hell, describing Folau's comments as "disappointing".


title: KJ Apa

text: In addition to soundtrack work on "Shortland Street", "Riverdale" and "I Still Believe", Apa has released independent music.


title: Biodiversity

text: Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic ("genetic variability"), species ("species diversity"), and ecosystem ("ecosystem diversity") level.


title: Biodiversity

text: Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth; it is usually greater in the tropics as a result of the warm climate and high primary productivity in the region near the equator. Tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10% of earth's surface and contain about 90% of the world's species. Marine biodiversity is usually higher along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest, and in the mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, but will be likely to slow in the future as a primary result of deforestation. It encompasses the evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes that sustain life.


title: Biodiversity

text: Rapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions. More than 99.9% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86% have not yet been described. The total amount of related DNA base pairs on Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 10 and weighs 50 billion tonnes. In comparison, the total mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as four trillion tons of carbon. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) of all organisms living on Earth.


title: Biodiversity

text: The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years. The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5 billion years ago, during the Eoarchean Era after a geological crust started to solidify following the earlier molten Hadean Eon. There are microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Other early physical evidence of a biogenic substance is graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old meta-sedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland. More recently, in 2015, "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth...then it could be common in the universe."


title: Biodiversity

text: Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity. The Phanerozoic aeon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion—a period during which the majority of multicellular phyla first appeared. The next 400 million years included repeated, massive biodiversity losses classified as mass extinction events. In the Carboniferous, rainforest collapse led to a great loss of plant and animal life. The Permian–Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago, was the worst; vertebrate recovery took 30 million years. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, occurred 65 million years ago and has often attracted more attention than others because it resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.


title: Biodiversity

text: The period since the emergence of humans has displayed an ongoing biodiversity reduction and an accompanying loss of genetic diversity. Named the Holocene extinction, and often referred to as the sixth mass extinction, the reduction is caused primarily by human impacts, particularly habitat destruction. Conversely, biodiversity positively impacts human health in many ways, although a few negative effects are studied.


title: Biodiversity

text: "Biodiversity" is most commonly used to replace the more clearly-defined and long-established terms, species diversity and species richness.


title: Biodiversity

text: Biologists most often define biodiversity as the "totality of genes, species and ecosystems of a region". An advantage of this definition is that it presents a unified view of the traditional types of biological variety previously identified:


title: Biodiversity

text: Forest biological diversity is a broad term that refers to all life forms found within forested areas and the ecological roles they perform. As such, forest biological diversity encompasses not just trees, but the multitude of plants, animals and microorganisms that inhabit forest areas and their associated genetic diversity. Forest biological diversity can be considered at different levels, including ecosystem, landscape, species, population and genetic. Complex interactions can occur within and between these levels. In biologically diverse forests, this complexity allows organisms to adapt to continually changing environmental conditions and to maintain ecosystem functions.


title: Biodiversity

text: In the annex to Decision II/9 (CBD, n.d.a), the Conference of the Parties to the CBD recognized that: "Forest biological diversity results from evolutionary processes over thousands and even millions of years which, in themselves, are driven by ecological forces such as climate, fire, competition and disturbance. Furthermore, the diversity of forest ecosystems (in both physical and biological features) results in high levels of adaptation, a feature of forest ecosystems which is an integral component of their biological diversity. Within specific forest ecosystems, the maintenance of ecological processes is dependent upon the maintenance of their biological diversity."


title: Biodiversity

text: Biolinguistic diversity comprises the expanse of all living things on earth, including all humans and the languages that they speak.


title: Biodiversity

text: Biodiversity is not evenly distributed, rather it varies greatly across the globe as well as within regions. Among other factors, the diversity of all living things (biota) depends on temperature, precipitation, altitude, soils, geography and the presence of other species. The study of the spatial distribution of organisms, species and ecosystems, is the science of biogeography.


title: Biodiversity

text: Diversity consistently measures higher in the tropics and in other localized regions such as the Cape Floristic Region and lower in polar regions generally. Rain forests that have had wet climates for a long time, such as Yasuní National Park in Ecuador, have particularly high biodiversity.


title: Biodiversity

text: Terrestrial biodiversity is thought to be up to 25 times greater than ocean biodiversity. Forests harbour most of Earth's terrestrial biodiversity. The conservation of the world's biodiversity is thus utterly dependent on the way in which we interact with and use the world's forests. A new method used in 2011, put the total number of species on Earth at 8.7 million, of which 2.1 million were estimated to live in the ocean. However, this estimate seems to under-represent the diversity of microorganisms. Forests provide habitats for 80 percent of amphibian species, 75 percent of bird species and 68 percent of mammal species. About 60 percent of all vascular plants are found in tropical forests. Mangroves provide breeding grounds and nurseries for numerous species of fish and shellfish and help trap sediments that might otherwise adversely affect seagrass beds and coral reefs, which are habitats for many more marine species.


title: Biodiversity

text: The biodiversity of forests varies considerably according to factors such as forest type, geography, climate and soils – in addition to human use. Most forest habitats in temperate regions support relatively few animal and plant species and species that tend to have large geographical distributions, while the montane forests of Africa, South America and Southeast Asia and lowland forests of Australia, coastal Brazil, the Caribbean islands, Central America and insular Southeast Asia have many species with small geographical distributions. Areas with dense human populations and intense agricultural land use, such as Europe, parts of Bangladesh, China, India and North America, are less intact in terms of their biodiversity. Northern Africa, southern Australia, coastal Brazil, Madagascar and South Africa, are also identified as areas with striking losses in biodiversity intactness.


title: Biodiversity

text: Generally, there is an increase in biodiversity from the poles to the tropics. Thus localities at lower latitudes have more species than localities at higher latitudes. This is often referred to as the latitudinal gradient in species diversity. Several ecological factors may contribute to the gradient, but the ultimate factor behind many of them is the greater mean temperature at the equator compared to that of the poles.


title: Biodiversity

text: Even though terrestrial biodiversity declines from the equator to the poles, some studies claim that this characteristic is unverified in aquatic ecosystems, especially in marine ecosystems. The latitudinal distribution of parasites does not appear to follow this rule.


title: Biodiversity

text: In 2016, an alternative hypothesis ("the fractal biodiversity") was proposed to explain the biodiversity latitudinal gradient. In this study, the species pool size and the fractal nature of ecosystems were combined to clarify some general patterns of this gradient. This hypothesis considers temperature, moisture, and net primary production (NPP) as the main variables of an ecosystem niche and as the axis of the ecological hypervolume. In this way, it is possible to build fractal hyper volumes, whose fractal dimension rises to three moving towards the equator.


title: Biodiversity

text: A biodiversity hotspot is a region with a high level of endemic species that have experienced great habitat loss. The term hotspot was introduced in 1988 by Norman Myers. While hotspots are spread all over the world, the majority are forest areas and most are located in the tropics.


title: Biodiversity

text: Brazil's Atlantic Forest is considered one such hotspot, containing roughly 20,000 plant species, 1,350 vertebrates and millions of insects, about half of which occur nowhere else. The island of Madagascar and India are also particularly notable. Colombia is characterized by high biodiversity, with the highest rate of species by area unit worldwide and it has the largest number of endemics (species that are not found naturally anywhere else) of any country. About 10% of the species of the Earth can be found in Colombia, including over 1,900 species of bird, more than in Europe and North America combined, Colombia has 10% of the world's mammals species, 14% of the amphibian species and 18% of the bird species of the world. Madagascar dry deciduous forests and lowland rainforests possess a high ratio of endemism. Since the island separated from mainland Africa 66 million years ago, many species and ecosystems have evolved independently. Indonesia's 17,000 islands cover and contain 10% of the world's flowering plants, 12% of mammals and 17% of reptiles, amphibians and birds—along with nearly 240 million people. Many regions of high biodiversity and/or endemism arise from specialized habitats which require unusual adaptations, for example, alpine environments in high mountains, or Northern European peat bogs.


title: Biodiversity

text: Accurately measuring differences in biodiversity can be difficult. Selection bias amongst researchers may contribute to biased empirical research for modern estimates of biodiversity. In 1768, Rev. Gilbert White succinctly observed of his Selborne, Hampshire ""all nature is so full, that that district produces the most variety which is the most examined.""


title: Biodiversity

text: Biodiversity is the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution. The origin of life has not been established by science, however, some evidence suggests that life may already have been well-established only a few hundred million years after the formation of the Earth. Until approximately 2.5 billion years ago, all life consisted of microorganisms – archaea, bacteria, and single-celled protozoans and protists.


title: Biodiversity

text: The history of biodiversity during the Phanerozoic (the last 540 million years), starts with rapid growth during the Cambrian explosion—a period during which nearly every phylum of multicellular organisms first appeared. Over the next 400 million years or so, invertebrate diversity showed little overall trend and vertebrate diversity shows an overall exponential trend. This dramatic rise in diversity was marked by periodic, massive losses of diversity classified as mass extinction events. A significant loss occurred when rainforests collapsed in the carboniferous. The worst was the Permian-Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago. Vertebrates took 30 million years to recover from this event.


title: Biodiversity

text: The biodivertisy of the past is called Paleobiodiversity. The fossil record suggests that the last few million years featured the greatest biodiversity in history. However, not all scientists support this view, since there is uncertainty as to how strongly the fossil record is biased by the greater availability and preservation of recent geologic sections. Some scientists believe that corrected for sampling artifacts, modern biodiversity may not be much different from biodiversity 300 million years ago, whereas others consider the fossil record reasonably reflective of the diversification of life. Estimates of the present global macroscopic species diversity vary from 2 million to 100 million, with a best estimate of somewhere near 9 million, the vast majority arthropods. Diversity appears to increase continually in the absence of natural selection.


title: Biodiversity

text: The existence of a "global carrying capacity", limiting the amount of life that can live at once, is debated, as is the question of whether such a limit would also cap the number of species. While records of life in the sea show a logistic pattern of growth, life on land (insects, plants and tetrapods) shows an exponential rise in diversity. As one author states, "Tetrapods have not yet invaded 64 percent of potentially habitable modes and it could be that without human influence the ecological and taxonomic diversity of tetrapods would continue to increase exponentially until most or all of the available eco-space is filled."


title: Biodiversity

text: It also appears that the diversity continues to increase over time, especially after mass extinctions.


title: Biodiversity

text: On the other hand, changes through the Phanerozoic correlate much better with the hyperbolic model (widely used in population biology, demography and macrosociology, as well as fossil biodiversity) than with exponential and logistic models. The latter models imply that changes in diversity are guided by a first-order positive feedback (more ancestors, more descendants) and/or a negative feedback arising from resource limitation. Hyperbolic model implies a second-order positive feedback. Differences in the strength of the second-order feedback due to different intensities of interspecific competition might explain the faster rediversification of ammonoids in comparison to bivalves after the end-Permian extinction. The hyperbolic pattern of the world population growth arises from a second-order positive feedback between the population size and the rate of technological growth. The hyperbolic character of biodiversity growth can be similarly accounted for by a feedback between diversity and community structure complexity. The similarity between the curves of biodiversity and human population probably comes from the fact that both are derived from the interference of the hyperbolic trend with cyclical and stochastic dynamics.


title: Biodiversity

text: Most biologists agree however that the period since human emergence is part of a new mass extinction, named the Holocene extinction event, caused primarily by the impact humans are having on the environment. It has been argued that the present rate of extinction is sufficient to eliminate most species on the planet Earth within 100 years.


title: Biodiversity

text: New species are regularly discovered (on average between 5–10,000 new species each year, most of them insects) and many, though discovered, are not yet classified (estimates are that nearly 90% of all arthropods are not yet classified). Most of the terrestrial diversity is found in tropical forests and in general, the land has more species than the ocean; some 8.7 million species may exist on Earth, of which some 2.1 million live in the ocean.


title: Biodiversity

text: "Ecosystem services are the suite of benefits that ecosystems provide to humanity." The natural species, or biota, are the caretakers of all ecosystems. It is as if the natural world is an enormous bank account of capital assets capable of paying life sustaining dividends indefinitely, but only if the capital is maintained.


title: Biodiversity

text: There have been many claims about biodiversity's effect on these ecosystem services, especially provisioning and regulating services. After an exhaustive survey through peer-reviewed literature to evaluate 36 different claims about biodiversity's effect on ecosystem services, 14 of those claims have been validated, 6 demonstrate mixed support or are unsupported, 3 are incorrect and 13 lack enough evidence to draw definitive conclusions.


title: Biodiversity

text: Other sources have reported somewhat conflicting results and in 1997 Robert Costanza and his colleagues reported the estimated global value of ecosystem services (not captured in traditional markets) at an average of $33 trillion annually.


title: Biodiversity

text: Since the Stone Age, species loss has accelerated above the average basal rate, driven by human activity. Estimates of species losses are at a rate 100–10,000 times as fast as is typical in the fossil record. Biodiversity also affords many non-material benefits including spiritual and aesthetic values, knowledge systems and education.


title: Biodiversity

text: Agricultural diversity can be divided into two categories: intraspecific diversity, which includes the genetic variation within a single species, like the potato ("Solanum tuberosum") that is composed of many different forms and types (e.g. in the U.S. they might compare russet potatoes with new potatoes or purple potatoes, all different, but all part of the same species, "S. tuberosum").


title: Biodiversity

text: The other category of agricultural diversity is called interspecific diversity and refers to the number and types of different species. Thinking about this diversity we might note that many small vegetable farmers grow many different crops like potatoes and also carrots, peppers, lettuce, etc.


title: Biodiversity

text: Agricultural diversity can also be divided by whether it is 'planned' diversity or 'associated' diversity. This is a functional classification that we impose and not an intrinsic feature of life or diversity. Planned diversity includes the crops which a farmer has encouraged, planted or raised (e.g. crops, covers, symbionts, and livestock, among others), which can be contrasted with the associated diversity that arrives among the crops, uninvited (e.g. herbivores, weed species and pathogens, among others).


title: Biodiversity

text: Associated biodiversity can be damaging or beneficial. The beneficial associated biodiversity include for instance wild pollinators such as wild bees and syrphid flies that pollinate crops and natural enemies and antagonists to pests and pathogens. Beneficial associated biodiversity occurs abundantly in crop fields and provide multiple ecosystem services such as pest control, nutrient cycling and pollination that support crop production.


title: Biodiversity

text: The control of damaging associated biodiversity is one of the great agricultural challenges that farmers face. On monoculture farms, the approach is generally to suppress damaging associated diversity using a suite of biologically destructive pesticides, mechanized tools and transgenic engineering techniques, then to rotate crops. Although some polyculture farmers use the same techniques, they also employ integrated pest management strategies as well as more labor-intensive strategies, but generally less dependent on capital, biotechnology, and energy.


title: Biodiversity

text: Interspecific crop diversity is, in part, responsible for offering variety in what we eat. Intraspecific diversity, the variety of alleles within a single species, also offers us a choice in our diets. If a crop fails in a monoculture, we rely on agricultural diversity to replant the land with something new. If a wheat crop is destroyed by a pest we may plant a hardier variety of wheat the next year, relying on intraspecific diversity. We may forgo wheat production in that area and plant a different species altogether, relying on interspecific diversity. Even an agricultural society that primarily grows monocultures relies on biodiversity at some point.


title: Biodiversity

text: Monoculture was a contributing factor to several agricultural disasters, including the European wine industry collapse in the late 19th century and the US southern corn leaf blight epidemic of 1970.


title: Biodiversity

text: Although about 80 percent of humans' food supply comes from just 20 kinds of plants, humans use at least 40,000 species. Earth's surviving biodiversity provides resources for increasing the range of food and other products suitable for human use, although the present extinction rate shrinks that potential.


title: Biodiversity

text: Biodiversity's relevance to human health is becoming an international political issue, as scientific evidence builds on the global health implications of biodiversity loss. This issue is closely linked with the issue of climate change, as many of the anticipated health risks of climate change are associated with changes in biodiversity (e.g. changes in populations and distribution of disease vectors, scarcity of fresh water, impacts on agricultural biodiversity and food resources etc.). This is because the species most likely to disappear are those that buffer against infectious disease transmission, while surviving species tend to be the ones that increase disease transmission, such as that of West Nile Virus, Lyme disease and Hantavirus, according to a study done co-authored by Felicia Keesing, an ecologist at Bard College and Drew Harvell, associate director for Environment of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future (ACSF) at Cornell University.


title: Biodiversity

text: The growing demand and lack of drinkable water on the planet presents an additional challenge to the future of human health. Partly, the problem lies in the success of water suppliers to increase supplies and failure of groups promoting the preservation of water resources. While the distribution of clean water increases, in some parts of the world it remains unequal. According to the World Health Organisation (2018), only 71% of the global population used a safely managed drinking-water service.


title: Biodiversity

text: Some of the health issues influenced by biodiversity include dietary health and nutrition security, infectious disease, medical science and medicinal resources, social and psychological health. Biodiversity is also known to have an important role in reducing disaster risk and in post-disaster relief and recovery efforts.


title: Biodiversity

text: According to the United Nations Environment Programme a pathogen, like a virus, have more chances to meet resistance in a diverse population. Therefore, in a population genetically similar it expands more easily. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic had less chances to occur in a world with higher biodiversity.


title: Biodiversity

text: Biodiversity provides critical support for drug discovery and the availability of medicinal resources. A significant proportion of drugs are derived, directly or indirectly, from biological sources: at least 50% of the pharmaceutical compounds on the US market are derived from plants, animals and microorganisms, while about 80% of the world population depends on medicines from nature (used in either modern or traditional medical practice) for primary healthcare. Only a tiny fraction of wild species has been investigated for medical potential. Biodiversity has been critical to advances throughout the field of bionics. Evidence from market analysis and biodiversity science indicates that the decline in output from the pharmaceutical sector since the mid-1980s can be attributed to a move away from natural product exploration ("bioprospecting") in favour of genomics and synthetic chemistry, indeed claims about the value of undiscovered pharmaceuticals may not provide enough incentive for companies in free markets to search for them because of the high cost of development; meanwhile, natural products have a long history of supporting significant economic and health innovation. Marine ecosystems are particularly important, although inappropriate bioprospecting can increase biodiversity loss, as well as violating the laws of the communities and states from which the resources are taken.


title: Biodiversity

text: Many industrial materials derive directly from biological sources. These include building materials, fibers, dyes, rubber, and oil. Biodiversity is also important to the security of resources such as water, timber, paper, fiber, and food. As a result, biodiversity loss is a significant risk factor in business development and a threat to long-term economic sustainability.


title: Biodiversity

text: Popular activities such as gardening and fishkeeping strongly depend on biodiversity. The number of species involved in such pursuits is in the tens of thousands, though the majority do not enter commerce.


title: Biodiversity

text: The relationships between the original natural areas of these often exotic animals and plants and commercial collectors, suppliers, breeders, propagators and those who promote their understanding and enjoyment are complex and poorly understood. The general public responds well to exposure to rare and unusual organisms, reflecting their inherent value.


title: Biodiversity

text: Philosophically it could be argued that biodiversity has intrinsic aesthetic and spiritual value to mankind "in and of itself". This idea can be used as a counterweight to the notion that tropical forests and other ecological realms are only worthy of conservation because of the services they provide.


title: Biodiversity

text: "There is now unequivocal evidence that biodiversity loss reduces the efficiency by which ecological communities capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients... There is mounting evidence that biodiversity increases the stability of ecosystem functions through time... Diverse communities are more productive because they contain key species that have a large influence on productivity and differences in functional traits among organisms increase total resource capture... The impacts of diversity loss on ecological processes might be sufficiently large to rival the impacts of many other global drivers of environmental change... Maintaining multiple ecosystem processes at multiple places and times requires higher levels of biodiversity than does a single process at a single place and time."


title: Biodiversity

text: It plays a part in regulating the chemistry of our atmosphere and water supply. Biodiversity is directly involved in water purification, recycling nutrients and providing fertile soils. Experiments with controlled environments have shown that humans cannot easily build ecosystems to support human needs; for example insect pollination cannot be mimicked, though there have been attempts to create artificial pollinators using unmanned aerial vehicles. The economic activity of pollination alone represented between $2.1–14.6 billion in 2003.


title: Biodiversity

text: According to Mora and colleagues, the total number of terrestrial species is estimated to be around 8.7 million while the number of oceanic species is much lower, estimated at 2.2 million. The authors note that these estimates are strongest for eukaryotic organisms and likely represent the lower bound of prokaryote diversity. Other estimates include:


title: Biodiversity

text: Since the rate of extinction has increased, many extant species may become extinct before they are described. Not surprisingly, in the animalia the most studied groups are birds and mammals, whereas fishes and arthropods are the least studied animals groups.


title: Biodiversity

text: A variety of objective means exist to empirically measure biodiversity. Each measure relates to a particular use of the data, and is likely to be associated with the variety of genes. Biodiversity is commonly measured in terms of taxonomic richness of a geographic area over a time interval.


title: Biodiversity

text: During the last century, decreases in biodiversity have been increasingly observed. In 2007, German Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel cited estimates that up to 30% of all species will be extinct by 2050. Of these, about one eighth of known plant species are threatened with extinction. Estimates reach as high as 140,000 species per year (based on Species-area theory). This figure indicates unsustainable ecological practices, because few species emerge each year. The rate of species loss is greater now than at any time in human history, with extinctions occurring at rates hundreds of times higher than background extinction rates. and expected to still grow in the upcoming years. As of 2012, some studies suggest that 25% of all mammal species could be extinct in 20 years.


title: Biodiversity

text: In absolute terms, the planet has lost 58% of its biodiversity since 1970 according to a 2016 study by the World Wildlife Fund. The Living Planet Report 2014 claims that "the number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish across the globe is, on average, about half the size it was 40 years ago". Of that number, 39% accounts for the terrestrial wildlife gone, 39% for the marine wildlife gone and 76% for the freshwater wildlife gone. Biodiversity took the biggest hit in Latin America, plummeting 83 percent. High-income countries showed a 10% increase in biodiversity, which was canceled out by a loss in low-income countries. This is despite the fact that high-income countries use five times the ecological resources of low-income countries, which was explained as a result of a process whereby wealthy nations are outsourcing resource depletion to poorer nations, which are suffering the greatest ecosystem losses.


title: Biodiversity

text: A 2017 study published in "PLOS One" found that the biomass of insect life in Germany had declined by three-quarters in the last 25 years. Dave Goulson of Sussex University stated that their study suggested that humans "appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse."


title: Biodiversity

text: In 2020 the World Wildlife Foundation published a report saying that "biodiversity is being destroyed at a rate unprecedented in human history". The report claims that 68% of the population of the examined species were destroyed in the years 1970 – 2016.


title: Biodiversity

text: In 2006, many species were formally classified as rare or endangered or threatened; moreover, scientists have estimated that millions more species are at risk which have not been formally recognized. About 40 percent of the 40,177 species assessed using the IUCN Red List criteria are now listed as threatened with extinction—a total of 16,119. The five main drivers to biodiversity loss are : habitat loss, invasive species, overexploitation (extreme hunting and fishing pressure), pollution, and climate change.


title: Biodiversity

text: Jared Diamond describes an "Evil Quartet" of habitat destruction, overkill, introduced species and secondary extinctions. Edward O. Wilson prefers the acronym HIPPO, standing for Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, human over-Population and Over-harvesting.


title: Biodiversity

text: 6. Human intrusions & activities that alter, destroy, disturb habitats and species from exhibiting natural behaviors


title: Biodiversity

text: Habitat destruction has played a key role in extinctions, especially in relation to tropical forest destruction. Factors contributing to habitat loss include: overconsumption, overpopulation, land use change, deforestation, pollution (air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination) and global warming or climate change.


title: Biodiversity

text: Habitat size and numbers of species are systematically related. Physically larger species and those living at lower latitudes or in forests or oceans are more sensitive to reduction in habitat area. Conversion to "trivial" standardized ecosystems (e.g., monoculture following deforestation) effectively destroys habitat for the more diverse species that preceded the conversion. Even the simplest forms of agriculture affect diversity – through clearing/draining the land, discouraging weeds and "pests", and encouraging just a limited set of domesticated plant and animal species. In some countries, property rights or lax law/regulatory enforcement are associated with deforestation and habitat loss.


title: Biodiversity

text: A 2007 study conducted by the National Science Foundation found that biodiversity and genetic diversity are codependent—that diversity among species requires diversity within a species and "vice versa". "If anyone type is removed from the system, the cycle can break down and the community becomes dominated by a single species."


title: Biodiversity

text: , the most threatened ecosystems occur in fresh water, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005, which was confirmed by the "Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment" organised by the biodiversity platform and the French "Institut de recherche pour le développement" (MNHNP).


title: Biodiversity

text: Co-extinctions are a form of habitat destruction. Co-extinction occurs when the extinction or decline in one species accompanies similar processes in another, such as in plants and beetles.


title: Biodiversity

text: A 2019 report has revealed that bees and other pollinating insects have been wiped out of almost a quarter of their habitats across the United Kingdom. The population crashes have been happening since the 1980s and are affecting biodiversity. The increase in industrial farming and pesticide use, combined with diseases, invasive species, and climate change is threatening the future of these insects and the agriculture they support.


title: Biodiversity

text: In 2019, research was published showing that insects are destroyed by human activities like habitat destruction, pesticide poisoning, invasive species and climate change at a rate that will cause the collapse of ecological systems in the next 50 years if it cannot be stopped.


title: Biodiversity

text: Barriers such as large rivers, seas, oceans, mountains and deserts encourage diversity by enabling independent evolution on either side of the barrier, via the process of allopatric speciation. The term invasive species is applied to species that breach the natural barriers that would normally keep them constrained. Without barriers, such species occupy new territory, often supplanting native species by occupying their niches, or by using resources that would normally sustain native species.


title: Biodiversity

text: The number of species invasions has been on the rise at least since the beginning of the 1900s. Species are increasingly being moved by humans (on purpose and accidentally). In some cases the invaders are causing drastic changes and damage to their new habitats (e.g.: zebra mussels and the emerald ash borer in the Great Lakes region and the lion fish along the North American Atlantic coast). Some evidence suggests that invasive species are competitive in their new habitats because they are subject to less pathogen disturbance. Others report confounding evidence that occasionally suggest that species-rich communities harbor many native and exotic species simultaneously while some say that diverse ecosystems are more resilient and resist invasive plants and animals. An important question is, "do invasive species cause extinctions?" Many studies cite effects of invasive species on natives, but not extinctions. Invasive species seem to increase local (i.e.: alpha diversity) diversity, which decreases turnover of diversity (i.e.: beta diversity). Overall gamma diversity may be lowered because species are going extinct because of other causes, but even some of the most insidious invaders (e.g.: Dutch elm disease, emerald ash borer, chestnut blight in North America) have not caused their host species to become extinct. Extirpation, population decline and homogenization of regional biodiversity are much more common. Human activities have frequently been the cause of invasive species circumventing their barriers, by introducing them for food and other purposes. Human activities therefore allow species to migrate to new areas (and thus become invasive) occurred on time scales much shorter than historically have been required for a species to extend its range.


title: Biodiversity

text: Not all introduced species are invasive, nor all invasive species deliberately introduced. In cases such as the zebra mussel, invasion of US waterways was unintentional. In other cases, such as mongooses in Hawaii, the introduction is deliberate but ineffective (nocturnal rats were not vulnerable to the diurnal mongoose). In other cases, such as oil palms in Indonesia and Malaysia, the introduction produces substantial economic benefits, but the benefits are accompanied by costly unintended consequences.


title: Biodiversity

text: Finally, an introduced species may unintentionally injure a species that depends on the species it replaces. In Belgium, "Prunus spinosa" from Eastern Europe leafs much sooner than its West European counterparts, disrupting the feeding habits of the "Thecla betulae" butterfly (which feeds on the leaves). Introducing new species often leaves endemic and other local species unable to compete with the exotic species and unable to survive. The exotic organisms may be predators, parasites, or may outcompete indigenous species for nutrients, water and light.


title: Biodiversity

text: At present, several countries have already imported so many exotic species, particularly agricultural and ornamental plants, that their indigenous fauna/flora may be outnumbered. For example, the introduction of kudzu from Southeast Asia to Canada and the United States has threatened biodiversity in certain areas. Nature offers effective ways to help mitigate climate change.


title: Biodiversity

text: Endemic species can be threatened with extinction through the process of genetic pollution, i.e. uncontrolled hybridization, introgression and genetic swamping. Genetic pollution leads to homogenization or replacement of local genomes as a result of either a numerical and/or fitness advantage of an introduced species.


title: Biodiversity

text: Hybridization and introgression are side-effects of introduction and invasion. These phenomena can be especially detrimental to rare species that come into contact with more abundant ones. The abundant species can interbreed with the rare species, swamping its gene pool. This problem is not always apparent from morphological (outward appearance) observations alone. Some degree of gene flow is normal adaptation and not all gene and genotype constellations can be preserved. However, hybridization with or without introgression may, nevertheless, threaten a rare species' existence.


title: Biodiversity

text: Overexploitation occurs when a resource is consumed at an unsustainable rate. This occurs on land in the form of overhunting, excessive logging, poor soil conservation in agriculture and the illegal wildlife trade. Overexploitation can lead to resource destruction, including extinction. Artificially developed projects can cause damage to the surrounding environment


title: Biodiversity

text: About 25% of world fisheries are now overfished to the point where their current biomass is less than the level that maximizes their sustainable yield.


title: Biodiversity

text: The overkill hypothesis, a pattern of large animal extinctions connected with human migration patterns, can be used to explain why megafaunal extinctions can occur within a relatively short time period.


title: Biodiversity

text: In agriculture and animal husbandry, the Green Revolution popularized the use of conventional hybridization to increase yield. Often hybridized breeds originated in developed countries and were further hybridized with local varieties in the developing world to create high yield strains resistant to local climate and diseases. Local governments and industry have been pushing hybridization. Formerly huge gene pools of various wild and indigenous breeds have collapsed causing widespread genetic erosion and genetic pollution. This has resulted in the loss of genetic diversity and biodiversity as a whole.


title: Biodiversity

text: Genetically modified organisms contain genetic material that is altered through genetic engineering. Genetically modified crops have become a common source for genetic pollution in not only wild varieties, but also in domesticated varieties derived from classical hybridization.


title: Biodiversity

text: Genetic erosion and genetic pollution have the potential to destroy unique genotypes, threatening future access to food security. A decrease in genetic diversity weakens the ability of crops and livestock to be hybridized to resist disease and survive changes in climate.


title: Biodiversity

text: Global warming is a major threat to global biodiversity. For example, coral reefs – which are biodiversity hotspots – will be lost within the century if global warming continues at the current rate.


title: Biodiversity

text: Climate change has proven to affect biodiversity and evidence supporting the altering effects is widespread. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide certainly affects plant morphology and is acidifying oceans, and temperature affects species ranges, phenology, and weather, but, mercifully, the major impacts that have been predicted are still potential futures. We have not documented major extinctions yet, even as climate change drastically alters the biology of many species.


title: Biodiversity

text: In 2004, an international collaborative study on four continents estimated that 10 percent of species would become extinct by 2050 because of global warming. "We need to limit climate change or we wind up with a lot of species in trouble, possibly extinct," said Dr. Lee Hannah, a co-author of the paper and chief climate change biologist at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation International.


title: Biodiversity

text: A recent study predicts that up to 35% of the world terrestrial carnivores and ungulates will be at higher risk of extinction by 2050 because of the joint effects of predicted climate and land-use change under business-as-usual human development scenarios.


title: Biodiversity

text: Climate change has advanced the time of evening when Brazilian free-tailed bats ("Tadarida brasiliensis") emerge to feed. This change is believed to be related to the drying of regions as temperatures rise. This earlier emergence exposes the bats to greater predation increased competition with other insectivores who feed in the twilight or daylight hours.


title: Biodiversity

text: Some contemporary studies have argued that habitat destruction for the expansion of agriculture and the overexploitation of wildlife are the most significant drivers of contemporary biodiversity loss, not climate change. Said Daniel M. Ashe, former director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service during the Presidency of Barack Obama: "The lie is that if we address the climate crisis, we will also solve the biodiversity crisis."


title: Biodiversity

text: The world's population numbered nearly 7.6 billion as of mid-2017 (which is approximately one billion more inhabitants compared to 2005) and is forecast to reach 11.1 billion in 2100. Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, told a parliamentary inquiry: "It is self-evident that the massive growth in the human population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity than any other single factor." At least until the middle of the 21st century, worldwide losses of pristine biodiverse land will probably depend much on the worldwide human birth rate.


title: Biodiversity

text: Scientists including Paul R. Ehrlich and Eileen Crist have argued that population size and growth, along with overconsumption, are significant factors in biodiversity loss and soil degradation, The 2019 IPBES "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services", and biologists including Ehrlich and Stuart Pimm, have noted that human population growth and overconsumption are the main drivers of species decline. E. O. Wilson, who contends that human population growth has been devastating to the planet's biodiversity, stated that the "pattern of human population growth in the 20th century was more bacterial than primate." He added that when "Homo sapiens" reached a population of six billion their biomass exceeded that of any other large land dwelling animal species that had ever existed by over 100 times, and that "we and the rest of life cannot afford another 100 years like that." A 2022 study published in "Biological Conservation" warned that conservation efforts will continue to fail if the primary drivers of biodiversity loss continue to be ignored, including population size and growth. In December 2022 Inger Andersen, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, stated as delegates were meeting for COP 15:


title: Biodiversity

text: We’ve just welcomed the 8 billionth member of the human race on this planet. That’s a wonderful birth of a baby, of course. But we need to understand that the more people there are, the more we put the Earth under heavy pressure. As far as biodiversity is concerned, we are at war with nature. We need to make peace with nature. Because nature is what sustains everything on Earth … the science is unequivocal.


title: Biodiversity

text: According to a 2020 study by the World Wildlife Fund, the global human population already exceeds planet's biocapacity – it would take the equivalent of 1.56 Earths of biocapacity to meet our current demands. The 2014 report further points that if everyone on the planet had the Footprint of the average resident of Qatar, we would need 4.8 Earths and if we lived the lifestyle of a typical resident of the US, we would need 3.9 Earths.


title: Biodiversity

text: Rates of decline in biodiversity in this sixth mass extinction match or exceed rates of loss in the five previous mass extinction events in the fossil record. Loss of biodiversity results in the loss of natural capital that supplies ecosystem goods and services. From the perspective of the method known as Natural Economy the economic value of 17 ecosystem services for Earth's biosphere (calculated in 1997) has an estimated value of US$33 trillion (3.3x10) per year. Species today are being wiped out at a rate 100 to 1,000 times higher than baseline, and the rate of extinctions is increasing. This process destroys the resilience and adaptability of life on Earth. The emergence of the sixth mass extinction is considered by conservation biologists, including Rodolfo Dirzo and Paul R. Ehrlich, to be "one of the most critical manifestations of the Anthropocene" and the continued decline of biodiversity constitutes "an unprecedented threat" to the continued existence of human civilization.


title: Biodiversity

text: In 2019, a summary for policymakers of the largest, most comprehensive study to date of biodiversity and ecosystem services, the "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services", was published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The main conclusions:


title: Biodiversity

text: 1. Over the last 50 years, the state of nature has deteriorated at an unprecedented and accelerating rate.


title: Biodiversity

text: 2. The main drivers of this deterioration have been changes in land and sea use, exploitation of living beings, climate change, pollution, and invasive species. These five drivers, in turn, are caused by societal behaviors, from consumption to governance.


title: Biodiversity

text: 3. Damage to ecosystems undermines 35 of 44 selected UN targets, including the UN General Assembly's Sustainable Development Goals for poverty, hunger, health, water, cities' climate, oceans, and land. It can cause problems with food, water and humanity's air supply.


title: Biodiversity

text: 4. To fix the problem, humanity will need a transformative change, including sustainable agriculture, reductions in consumption and waste, fishing quotas and collaborative water management. On page 8 the report proposes on page 8 of the summary " enabling visions of a good quality of life that do not entail ever-increasing material consumption" as one of the main measures. The report states that "Some pathways chosen to achieve the goals related to energy, economic growth, industry and infrastructure and sustainable consumption and production (Sustainable Development Goals 7, 8, 9 and 12), as well as targets related to poverty, food security and cities (Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2 and 11), could have substantial positive or negative impacts on nature and therefore on the achievement of other Sustainable Development Goals".


title: Biodiversity

text: The October 2020 "Era of Pandemics" report by IPBES asserted that the same human activities which are the underlying drivers of climate change and biodiversity loss are also the same drivers of pandemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Peter Daszak, Chair of the IPBES workshop, said "there is no great mystery about the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic – or of any modern pandemic . . . Changes in the way we use land; the expansion and intensification of agriculture; and unsustainable trade, production and consumption disrupt nature and increase contact between wildlife, livestock, pathogens and people. This is the path to pandemics."


title: Biodiversity

text: Conservation biology matured in the mid-20th century as ecologists, naturalists and other scientists began to research and address issues pertaining to global biodiversity declines.


title: Biodiversity

text: The conservation ethic advocates management of natural resources for the purpose of sustaining biodiversity in species, ecosystems, the evolutionary process and human culture and society.


title: Biodiversity

text: Conservation biology is reforming around strategic plans to protect biodiversity. Preserving global biodiversity is a priority in strategic conservation plans that are designed to engage public policy and concerns affecting local, regional and global scales of communities, ecosystems and cultures. Action plans identify ways of sustaining human well-being, employing natural capital, market capital and ecosystem services.


title: Biodiversity

text: In the EU Directive 1999/22/EC zoos are described as having a role in the preservation of the biodiversity of wildlife animals by conducting research or participation in breeding programs.


title: Biodiversity

text: Removal of exotic species will allow the species that they have negatively impacted to recover their ecological niches. Exotic species that have become pests can be identified taxonomically (e.g., with Digital Automated Identification SYstem (DAISY), using the barcode of life). Removal is practical only given large groups of individuals due to the economic cost.


title: Biodiversity

text: As sustainable populations of the remaining native species in an area become assured, "missing" species that are candidates for reintroduction can be identified using databases such as the "Encyclopedia of Life" and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.


title: Biodiversity

text: Protected areas, including forest reserves and biosphere reserves, serve many functions including for affording protection to wild animals and their habitat. Protected areas have been set up all over the world with the specific aim of protecting and conserving plants and animals. Some scientists have called on the global community to designate as protected areas of 30 percent of the planet by 2030, and 50 percent by 2050, in order to mitigate biodiversity loss from anthropogenic causes. In a study published 4 September 2020 in Science Advances researchers mapped out regions that can help meet critical conservation and climate goals.


title: Biodiversity

text: Protected areas safeguard nature and cultural resources and contribute to livelihoods, particularly at local level. There are over 238 563 designated protected areas worldwide, equivalent to 14.9 percent of the earth's land surface, varying in their extension, level of protection, and type of management (IUCN, 2018).Forest protected areas are a subset of all protected areas in which a significant portion of the area is forest. This may be the whole or only a part of the protected area. Globally, 18 percent of the world's forest area, or more than 700 million hectares, fall within legally established protected areas such as national parks, conservation areas and game reserves.


title: Biodiversity

text: The benefits of protected areas extend beyond their immediate environment and time. In addition to conserving nature, protected areas are crucial for securing the long-term delivery of ecosystem services. They provide numerous benefits including the conservation of genetic resources for food and agriculture, the provision of medicine and health benefits, the provision of water, recreation and tourism, and for acting as a buffer against disaster. Increasingly, there is acknowledgement of the wider socioeconomic values of these natural ecosystems and of the ecosystem services they can provide.


title: Biodiversity

text: Forest protected areas in particular play many important roles including as a provider of habitat, shelter, food and genetic materials, and as a buffer against disaster. They deliver stable supplies of many goods and environmental services. The role of protected areas, especially forest protected areas, in mitigating and adapting to climate change has increasingly been recognized over the last few years. Protected areas not only store and sequester carbon (i.e. the global network of protected areas stores at least 15 percent of terrestrial carbon), but also enable species to adapt to changing climate patterns by providing refuges and migration corridors. Protected areas also protect people from sudden climate events and reduce their vulnerability to weather-induced problems such as floods and droughts (UNEP–WCMC, 2016).