Biosphere · Threatened life

Global Vertebrate Hotspots

For more than two decades, conservation has been guided by a map of biodiversity hotspots: regions rich in plants found nowhere else that had already lost most of their natural vegetation. Thirty-six are recognized today. A 2026 study redraws that map for animals, and for the pressures they face now.

It weighs 33,604 species of land amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles by how small their ranges are and how close they are to extinction, then overlays seven threats: logging, agriculture, hunting, pollution, invasive species, climate change and urbanization. Where the places that matter most for a group of animals are also where its species are most likely to be harmed by one of these threats, the study marks a vertebrate hotspot.

• 7,209

  amphibians

• 10,984

  birds

• 5,608

  mammals

• 9,803

  reptiles

1. 13%

   of Earth's land, about 21 million km², is a vertebrate hotspot. Most of it is tropical: a third of the world's broadleaf forests and over half of its mangroves.

2. About 1 in 3

   hotspots lies outside the 36 original ones. Places once under little pressure, like the eastern miombo woodlands of south-central Africa and South America's dry Chaco, now qualify after two decades of rapid habitat loss.

3. 61%

   of hotspots are triggered by a single group of animals. Where amphibians are most at risk is often not where mammals are, so no one group can stand in for the others.

4. 66%

   of hotspots are triggered, at least in part, by logging, the leading threat for all four groups, followed by agriculture (44%). Invasive species weigh most on amphibians and reptiles; farming, cities and hunting on mammals. Counting habitat loss alone, as the original map did, would miss 19% of the hotspots.

5. Over 1 in 3

   people in the world live inside these hotspots, which cover only 13% of the land. Protecting them has to go hand in hand with the rights and wellbeing of the communities who live there.

Because the map names the threat as well as the place, it points to the response that fits. Protected and conserved areas can hold back logging and farming; invasive species, pollution and climate change call for other tools. The method is open, and can be rerun as new data on species and threats arrive.

Source Farooq H, Harfoot MBJ, Rahbek C, Visconti P, Geldmann J (2026). Global vertebrate hotspots: Linking biodiversity importance and threat across taxa. One Earth 9, 101866. doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2026.101866