It is less than 20 years since we last woke up to headlines proclaiming that 1 million species will become extinct (see R. J. Ladle et al. Nature 428, 799; 2004). Almost identical headlines are now being generated across the world by the release of the summary of the global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Although many conservationists will be glad of the publicity, it risks detracting from the more detailed findings of this important report when it is published later this year.

In both cases, the extinction figure is an extrapolation based on predicted, rather than documented, species richness. Such headlines are easy targets for the anti-environmentalist lobby and so could undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the report and of conservation science in general.

The doom and gloom of the report summary is intended to mobilize conservation action (see N. Knowlton Nature 544, 271; 2017). But the more often such claims are made, the more likely they are to be met with apathy. What we need is a more nuanced use of extinction rhetoric, one that aligns scientific evidence of documented and predicted extinctions with cultural frames, institutional frameworks and organizational interests.