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Global trade has made it easier to buy things. But our consumption habits often fuel threats to biodiversity - such as deforestation, overhunting and overfishing - thousands of miles away. Now, scientists have mapped how major consuming countries drive threats to endangered species elsewhere. Such maps could be useful for finding the most efficient ways to protect critical areas important for biodiversity, the researchers suggest in a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. For example, the maps show that commodities used in the United States and the European Union exert several threats on marine species in Southeast Asia, mainly due to overfishing, pollution and aquaculture. The U.S. also exerts pressure on hotspots off the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and at the mouth of the Orinoco around Trinidad and Tobago. European Union's impacts extend to the islands around Madagascar: Réunion, Mauritius and the Seychelles. The maps also revealed some unexpected linkages. For instance, the impact of U.S. consumption in Brazil appears to be much greater in southern Brazil (in the Brazilian Highlands where agriculture and grazing are extensive) than inside the Amazon basin, which receives a larger chunk of the attention. The U.S. also has high biodiversity footprint in southern Spain and Portugal, due to their impacts on threatened fish and bird species. These countries are rarely perceived as threat hotspots.

Freshwater supplies have already seriously declined in 19 global hotspots - from China to the Caspian Sea - due to overuse, groundbreaking study shows

Bordering Myanmar on the southeast and the Indian states of Tripura on the north and Mizoram on the east, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is one of these areas. Characterized by semi-evergreen forest that is considered part of the highly endangered Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot, CHT is a refuge for at least 26 globally threatened species, making it a critical conservation priority. But conservation efforts in the region have historically been challenged by the very remoteness and political instability that have helped protect it from deforestation seen in other parts of Bangladesh. That protection is now disappearing with the influx of settlers from other regions who are increasingly clearing forests for agriculture, logging trees for timber and firewood, and hunting wildlife. In other words, time is running out for Bangladesh's last rainforest and its traditional tribes.