SUMMARYExtinctions have altered island ecosystems throughout the late Quaternary. Here, we review the main historic drivers of extinctions on islands, patterns in extinction chronologies between islands, and the potential for restoring ecosystems through reintroducing extirpated species. While some extinctions have been caused by climatic and environmental change, most have been caused by anthropogenic impacts. We propose a general model to describe patterns in these anthropogenic island extinctions. Hunting, habitat loss and the introduction of invasive predators accompanied prehistoric settlement and caused declines of endemic island species. Later settlement by European colonists brought further land development, a different suite of predators and new drivers, leading to more extinctions. Extinctions alter ecological networks, causing ripple effects for islands through the loss of ecosystem processes, functions and interactions between species. Reintroduction of extirpated species can help restore ecosystem function and processes, and can be guided by palaeoecology. However, reintroduction projects must also consider the cultural, social and economic needs of humans now inhabiting the islands and ensure resilience against future environmental and climate change.

Many of the world's oceanic and oceanic‐like islands possessed endemic mammal faunas before they were colonized by humans. These faunas, unbalanced and impoverished compared to continental faunas, usually lacked large mammalian carnivores. In virtually all cases, the arrival of humans and their domesticants and commensals on these islands is related to the extirpation of large numbers of endemic insular mammals. These extinction events affected at least 27% of autochthonous mammal species on the world's oceanic and oceanic‐like islands. This percentage rises the 35% when volant mammals are excluded. This reduction in the natural biodiversity brought about the disappearance of several unique biological types that apparently never existed on the continents.

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