A recent British study revealed that birds are the best group to track current extinction rates, and those rates may be ten times faster than records suggest. (billionstonone.com)
With a realistic current extinction rate of less than 1 per cent of species per decade and a discovery rate of something like 3 per cent a decade, the authors conclude: «the rate of species description greatly outpaces extinction rates». (reviverestore.org)
The main tool used by biologists to calculate current extinction rates is a longstanding formula called the species - area curve, which gives an estimate of species lost for a given area of habitat destroyed. (nytimes.com)