An international conservation organization has warned that groups of marine mammals, several species of abalone, and a species of Caribbean coral are now at risk of extinction.
This was announced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature during the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15, in Montreal, reports a local Arabic daily.
This year, the union sounded the alarm about the sea cow, a large and docile marine mammal that lives from the eastern coast of Africa to the western Pacific.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature said in a statement that dugongs are endangered throughout their range, and now the animals living in eastern Africa have entered the Red List as Critically Endangered.
He explained that those living in New Caledonia entered the red list as vulnerable. He noted that the main threats to these animals are unintentional entrapment in East Africa, overfishing in New Caledonia, as well as boat collisions and loss of seaweed that they eat.
The ITU Red List includes more than 150,000 species, and the list sometimes overlaps with species listed under the US Endangered Species Act, as in the case of the North Atlantic right whale.
The union says more than 42,000 species on the Red List are threatened with extinction.
The federation uses several categories to describe the animal’s status, which range from “not threatened” to “endangered,” and the federation usually updates its Red List two or three times a year.
This week’s update included more than 3,000, in addition to the Red List, of which 700 are endangered species.
Jane Smart, head of the Science and Data Center of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said that it takes political will to save threatened species, and the seriousness of the new lists could be a clear call.