While continuing to look for authoritative information about How Many Species Are Endangered, I came across the website for the Center for Biological Diversity.
At first glance, I thought it was a website created by a group of biologists focusing on the issue of ‘conservation biology’ or ‘biological diversity’.
Wrong. Way wrong.
It turns out the website represents a group of seemingly very dedicated individuals (primarily lawyers and biologists) who have taken on the endangered species issue using the tool of law. And apparently with a great deal of success.
I plan to journal about both this organization, and laws that were created to protect endangered species in the future. Having written about environmental laws for years, the topic of laws protecting endangered species is a subject near and dear to my heart.
However, I don’t want to digress too far from the question of How Many Species Are Endangered, which is relevant to the Center for Biological Diversity’s website.
On their website the Center for Biological Diversity makes the following statements:
Nobody really knows how many species are in danger of becoming extinct. Noted conservation scientist David Wilcove estimates that there are 14,000 to 35,000 endangered species in the United States, which is 7 to 18 percent of U.S. flora and fauna. The IUCN has assessed roughly 3 percent of described species and identified 16,928 species worldwide as being threatened with extinction, or roughly 38 percent of those assessed.
No group of animals has a higher rate of endangerment than amphibians. Scientists estimate that a third or more of all the roughly 6,300 known species of amphibians are at risk of extinction.
Globally, BirdLife International estimates that 12 percent of known 9,865 bird species are now considered threatened, with 192 species, or 2 percent, facing an “extremely high risk” of extinction in the wild.
Across the globe, 1,851 species of fish — 21 percent of all fish species evaluated — were deemed at risk of extinction by the IUCN in 2010, including more than a third of sharks and rays.
Overall, the IUCN estimates that half the globe’s 5,491 known mammals are declining in population and a fifth are clearly at risk of disappearing forever with no less than 1,131 mammals across the globe classified as endangered, threatened, or vulnerable. In addition to primates, marine mammals — including several species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises — are among those mammals slipping most quickly toward extinction.
Of the more than 300,000 known species of plants, the IUCN has evaluated only 12,914 species, finding that about 68 percent of evaluated plant species are threatened with extinction.
Globally, 21 percent of the total evaluated reptiles in the world are deemed endangered or vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN.
This is very good information, but it still does not answer the question of How Many Species Are Endangered. However it does help start to shape the answer to that question.
So the search continues.
If you have the time, you might want to visit the website for Center for Biological Diversity and learn more about this organization. It would be well worth a look.
When it comes to saving endangered species, this group definately seems to be ‘the sharp end of the stick.’
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