One bright spot is the mountain gorilla, a subspecies of the eastern gorilla whose population is not decreasing largely due to ecotourism in the Democractic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda, WWF’s Hemley says.
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He said that declaring the great ape as critically endangered will help raise the public’s awareness on the great ape and the dangers that they are facing.
This means they are just one step away from extinction.
And the other bad news included in the update was the eastern gorilla’s status change to critically endangered. The Chimpanzee and Bonobo are listed as “endangered”.
Following decades of conservational work, the Giant Panda has successfully climbed off of the IUCN’s “endangered” animal list…
The giant panda has been downgraded from “Endangered” to “Vulnerable” on the global list of endangered species, reported World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on its website Sunday.
Nearly 1/3 – 23,928 – are threatened with extinction, it said.
For the gorillas of the Congo, where the majority of the population lives, conservation will be a struggle because of political instability, said primatologist Russell Mittermeier, executive vice chairman of the Conservation International environmental group and chairman of IUCN’s primates specialist group. The world’s giant panda population, native to China’s bamboo forests, grew 17% in the past decade, the WWF said, with 1,864 counted in the wild in 2014.
Concern is also increasing for the zebra, which was once widespread and abundant but is being hunted for bushmeat and skins. Mark’s cyanea and hairy wikstroemia, both endemic to the U.S. state, were both thought to be extinct but small numbers of each species were recently found, the Guardian reported. The species has now moved from “endangered” to “vulnerable” in the classification by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Endangered Species. Although is not an exhaustive list of all the species on Earth, it does provide an important snapshot of how rapidly flora and fauna populations are changing and the effect that humans are having on the plants and animals we share a planet with.
IUCN experts noted that such programmes involved considerable funding and effort, underscoring the need for the world to put more financing into conservation. The remaining two are also under considerable threat of extinction.
This update of the IUCN Red List also brings some good news and shows that conservation action is delivering positive results.
“China has given a wonderful example of what can happen when a government is committed to conservation”.
Among the new entries to the Red List is the Psychedelic Rock Gecko (Cnemaspis psychedelica), which is listed as “endangered” and known only to exist on two small offshore islands in southern Vietnam and is highly, and illegally, sought for the commercial pet trade. Illegal hunting and habitat loss are wiping out some of humanity’s closest relatives.
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Compared with previous years, even more species are under threat.
