hello tweets,

i received this message a few days ago and thought i'd share it with
you.

regards,

Deborah Wisti-Peterson, PhD Candidate nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://students.washington.edu/~nyneve/
Life is better when you are reading a good book -- Author Tim Green



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: extinction is forever

FAIR USE NOTICE: This article is being posted for educational and nonprofit
purposes only. Richard Wilcox, rwilcox at interlink.or.jp

--


Friday, September 29 1:00 AM SGT

Extinction crisis is accelerating, warns conservation watchdog

GLAND, Switzerland, Sept 28 (AFP) -

The first assessment in four years of the world's endangered wildlife warne=
d
Thursday that the extinction crisis was accelerating, with dramatic
population declines recorded among many species, including primates.

Compiled by 7,000 volunteer experts working in nearly every country of the
world, the World Conservation Union's (IUCN's) so-called Red List is
considered the most exhaustive assessment of plants, birds, fish and animal=
s
facing oblivion.

More than 11,000 species face a high risk of extinction in the near future,
in mainly all cases as a result of habitat loss, the new list says.

This includes nearly 24 percent of mammal species and 12 percent of bird
species, as well as a quarter of assessed reptile species, 20 percent of
amphibians and 30 percent of fishes.

Compared with the 1996 Red List, the overall percentage of threatened
mammals and birds has not changed much -- but many of the species have move=
d
closer to following the fate of the dodo.

The 2000 Red List identifies 180 mammal species in the highest risk categor=
y
-- "critically endangered" -- and 340 in the next category of risk,
"endangered." This compares to a tally of 169 and 315 in those categories
just four years ago.

Among birds, 182 species are now critically endangered and 321 endangered,
compared to 168 and 235 in 1996.

Those most vulnerable are some of the best-loved figures in wildlife, the
inspiration for innumerable cartoons, children's stories, TV shows and
romantic poetry.

Primates, genetically Man's closest relatives, now have 19 critically
endangered species, compared with 13 in 1996.

Long-line fishing has decimated the population of albatrosses, of which
there are now 16 threatened species compared with only three in 1996.

Freshwater turtles, slaughtered for food and medical use in Asia, have gone
from 10 to 24 critically endangered species in just four years.

A threatened species is one that falls into one of three scientific
categories established by the Red List: Critically Endangered; Endangered;
and Vulnerable.

It establishes other categories for species that are completely extinct or
extinct in the wild; for species deemed to be a lower risk, which include
many bats, rodents and birds; and those for which there is no data.

"The fact that the number of critically endangered species has increased ..=
=2E
was a jolting surprise, even to those already familiar with today's
increasing threats to biodiversity," IUCN's director general, Maritta von
Bieberstein Koch-Weser, said in a press statement.

"These findings should be taken very seriously by the global community."

Russell Mittermeier, chair of the IUCN's primate specialist group, warned:
"Many wonderful creatures will be lost in the first few decades of the 21st
century unless we greatly increase levels of support, involvement and
commitment to conservation."

He added that the true number of threatened species may be very much higher=
,
as in some cases data was scant or absent. Only four percent of the world's
identified plant species have been evaluated, for instance.

The report names Brazil, China, India and Indonesia as being among the
countries with the most threatened mammals and birds. Plant species are
declining swiftly in Latin America, central and western Africa and Southeas=
t
Asia.

Lowland and mountain tropical rainforest and freshwater habitats are
extremely vulnerable.

The Red List coincides with a paper in the peer-reviewed journal
Conservation Biology that says Waldron's red colobus, a monkey that used to
live in the rainforests of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, has disappeared, markin=
g
the first extinction among primates since the early 1700s.

In the last 500 years, human activity has forced 816 species of wildlife to
become extinct or to survive only in captivity, IUCN says.

The Red List is searchable on a website: www.redlist.org.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-


Copyright =A9 1994-2000 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.