"Overall biodiversity loss is accelerating rather than slowing down." — Diversitas organizer Bob Scholes.
Scientists attending a U.N. conference in South Africa were warned that the world will not meet its goal of slowing biodiversity loss by next year.
The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity set the target in 2003.
The prediction came just ahead of a meeting of the Diversitas group of global biodiversity experts in Cape Town.
It says that pollution, urban sprawl and climate change are causing extinction rates to be much higher than predicted just a few years ago.
Diversitas researchers say that freshwater fish, reptiles and amphibians are becoming extinct six times faster than comparable species on land and in the oceans.
Conference organizers say that world leaders have failed to implement the policies needed to achieve the goals to protect threatened species set at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg seven years ago.
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