one in four mammals threatened with extinction
Posted by admin on 07 Oct 2008 at 05:58 am | Tagged as: devastation
by Alister Doyle, reprinted from commondreams.org
A quarter of the world’s mammals are threatened with extinction, an international survey showed on Monday, and the destruction of habitats and hunting are the major causes.
The Caspian Seal (Pusa caspica) moved from vulnerable to endangered. Its population has declined by 90% in the last 100 years due to unsustainable hunting and habitat degradation and is still decreasing Photograph: Simon Goodman/IUCN
The report, the most comprehensive to date by 1,700 researchers, showed populations of half of all 5,487 species of mammals were in decline. Mammals range in size from blue whales to Thailand’s insect-sized bumblebee bat.
“Mammals are declining faster than we thought — one in four species is threatened with extinction worldwide,” Jan Schipper, who led the team, told Reuters of the report issued in Barcelona as part of a “Red List” of threatened species.
He said threats were worst for land mammals in Asia, where creatures such as orang utans are suffering from deforestation. Almost 80 percent of primates in the region were under threat.
Of the 4,651 mammals for which scientists have data, 1,139 species were under threat of extinction. Schipper said the data was far broader than the previous review of mammals in 1996.
Threats to species including the Tasmanian Devil, an Australian marsupial, the Caspian seal or the fishing cat, found in Asia, were among those to have worsened. At least 76 mammals have gone extinct since 1500.
“Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions,” said Julia Marton-Lefevre, director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles the Red List and is meeting in Spain.
