Reuters - Thursday, July 2 01:05 am
Deborah Zabarenko, Environment
Correspondent
More than 800 animal and plant species have gone
extinct in the past five centuries with nearly 17,000 now
threatened with extinction, the International Union for
Conservation of Nature reported on Thursday.
A detailed analysis of these numbers indicates the international
community will fail to meet its 2010 goal of bolstering
biodiversity -- maintaining a variety of life forms -- a commitment
made by most governments in 2002.
Based on data released in 2008 in the union's Red List, the new
IUCN analysis is being released now to precede the 2010 target year
and to draw a connection between crises in the financial and
environmental realms, said report editor Jean-Christophe Vie.
"We don't want to make a choice between nature and the economy;
we just want to bring nature to the same level when you have to
take a decision," Vie said by telephone from Switzerland.
"Jobs are important but not jobs to the detriment of nature," he
said. "We have done that too much and look where we have
arrived."
The new analysis shows 869 species became extinct or extinct in
the wild since the year 1500 while 290 more species are considered
critically endangered and possibly extinct.
At least 16,928 species are threatened with extinction,
including nearly one-third of amphibians, more than one in eight
birds and nearly a quarter of mammals.
By comparison, the 2004 Red List showed 784 extinctions since
1500.
PROSPERITY AND BIODIVERSITY
The report said this is not a comprehensive list with only 2.7
percent of the 1.8 million described species analyzed.
The number of extinctions is "a gross underestimate but it does
provide a useful snapshot of what is happening to all forms of life
on Earth," the study authors wrote.
"It's much more severe than the economic crisis or the bank
crisis," Vie said. "You can lose a core industry but you can
rebuild one. In nature, if you lose it, you lose it, and you're
losing a lot of capital that cannot be replaced."
He said the notion that biodiversity is secondary to economic
health is largely a view held by countries in North America, Europe
and elsewhere, where the connection to natural products is less
direct.
In less developed areas, there is a direct line between human
prosperity and biodiversity.
In much of the world, Vie said, "The main problem every day is
not to find a job, it's to find food ... and in most places this
comes from biodiversity, from nature, from fish and plants."
For land-based species, the main threat is habitat destruction
through farming, logging and development.
Climate change is not now the main threat to biodiversity but
that could change, the report said.
In examining 17,000 species of birds, amphibians and
reef-building corals, the report found a significant proportion
that are not now threatened are susceptible to climate change,
including 30 percent of birds, 51 percent of corals and 41 percent
of amphibians that are not threatened now.
