An international conservation organization said groups of marine mammals, several species of abalone and one species of Caribbean coral are now critically endangered.
The announcement was made by the International Union for Conservation of Nature during the United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity, or COP15, in Montreal on Friday.
It has hundreds of members and government agencies from around the world and is one of the most extensive ecological networks on the planet.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature uses its Red List of Threatened Species to rank animals that are critically endangered.
This year, the union sounded the alarm about the dugong, a large and docile marine mammal that lives from the east coast of Africa to the western Pacific.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature said in a statement that dugongs are endangered throughout their range, and now the animals living in East Africa are listed as critically endangered on the Red List.
The organization also said that New Caledonians are redlisted as vulnerable.
The federation noted that the main threats to these animals are unintentional trapping in East Africa, overfishing in New Caledonia, as well as boat collisions and the loss of the algae on which they feed.
The ITU Red List includes over 150,000 species, and this list sometimes overlaps with species listed under the US Endangered Species Act, as in the case of the North Atlantic right whale.
The Union says more than 42,000 species listed in the Red Book are endangered.
The federation uses several categories to describe the status of animals, which range from “not threatened” to “endangered”, and the federation usually updates its Red List two or three times a year.
This week’s update included over 3,000 additions to the Red List, including 700 endangered species.
Saving endangered species requires political will, said Jane Smart, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Center for Science and Data, and the severity of the new listings could be a clear challenge.
Source: Associated Press.
