More than one quarter of the more than 150,000 species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species are threatened with extinction
The outlook for Earth’s biodiversity is grim. Pollution, disease, habitat loss and climate change are among the myriad stressors now threatening tens of thousands of species across the planet. Of the more than 150,000 species evaluated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, “over a quarter are threatened with extinction,” says Craig Hilton-Taylor, who heads the IUCN Red List Unit. “The trend on the Red List is that things are getting worse.
The updates come during crucial international negotiations in Montreal to draft a global agreement aimed at protecting biodiversity and reversing its decline by 2030, akin to the Paris climate accord that set goals for reducing greenhouses gas emissions and limiting global warming. The climate emergency often overshadows the plight of Earth’s rapidly vanishing species, but these crises are “two sides of the same coin,” and addressing one helps alleviate the other, Hilton-Taylor says.
The abalone is a marine mollusk widely considered a seafood delicacy. Nearly 40 percent of the world’s 54 abalone species are now threatened with extinction, primarily because of unsustainable harvesting and poaching, the IUCN says. Pollution, disease and marine heat waves exacerbated by climate change have compounded these animals’ plight.
The IUCN also spotlighted the pillar coral, which is found throughout the Caribbean. Its population has declined by more than 80 percent across most of its range since 1990, and it has moved from vulnerable to critically endangered. Of acute concern is the highly contagious stony coral tissue loss disease that has emerged in the past four years.
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