26,000 Species Added To Endangered List

[Guest guest]

Search in The Statesman Web Tuesday, May 2 2006

Editorial

 

 

26,000 Species Added To Endangered List

 

Barrie Clement

LONDON, May 1: More than 26,000 species of animals, birds, plants and fish will

this week be added to the list of those in serious danger of extinction.

Thousands of species including the common hippopotamus are to be added or moved

up the so-called “red list” drawn up by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

The alarming study by the union, one of the most authoritative on world flora

and fauna, will make clear that global warming and human activity is

responsible.

The report will confirm that the common skate, once abundant around Britain, has

virtually been wiped out. The fish is still stocked by some supermarkets and

fishmongers, but there is an increasing pressure on them to ban it in the same

way that cod has been removed from many retailers’ shelves.

In general sharks, skates and rays are all thought to be vulnerable. Around 20

per cent of sharks are in increasing danger of extinction, the study says. The

giant devil ray, similar to a manta ray, is often accidentally caught in nets

intended for tuna and other fish.

David Sims, senior research fellow at the Marine Biological Association

Laboratory at Plymouth, said that one of the main problems with sharks and rays

was that they bore live young so that they reproduce more slowly. “Global

fisheries are having a massive effect on population. Some of the nets they use

could engulf St Paul’s Cathedral,” he said.

The new research by the IUCN is the result of two years’ work by scientists all

over the world and adds to the picture revealed in the union’s last report in

2004 which said that 15,589 species faced extinction ~ 7,266 animals and 8,323

plants and lichens.

One of the creatures predicted to die out is the Yangtze River dolphin or Baiji.

It is thought that just 30 remain and that the chances of breeding age pairs

meeting is extremely low.

The endangered species in the 2004 report included a third of amphibians and a

half of all fresh water turtles. Many more, however, are thought to have become

extinct without having been recorded.

The Independent