Over 50% of Data Deficient Species May Be in Danger of Extinction
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Loading... - Scot Lewis
- 24 Jan 2023
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We know very little about a large number of species. Unfortunately, it is not always a good sign.
Often, we just do not understand a species well enough to tell how it is doing. There are thousands of plants and animals on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) recognized red list that are classified as “data deficient.”
Simply put, the researchers don’t know enough about these species to be able to say whether or not they are in danger of becoming extinct. However, with a little more knowledge now at hand, the news is once again not good.
“We looked at species that are relatively poorly known, but where at least the geographical distribution is known. These species tend to be threatened with extinction more often than ones that we know more about,” says Francesca Verones, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Industrial Ecology Programme.
In fact, more than half of these lesser-known species may be in danger of disappearing.
Additionally, there are other species that are even less well recognized. We don’t even know whether these species are in danger.
1 000 000 or 147 000?
IPBES, an international panel of leading biodiversity researchers, estimates that at least one million of the species on our planet are in danger of becoming extinct. But it’s possible that you also heard other numbers. The IUCN has evaluated about 147 000 species. 41,000 of them, or 2 percent, are threatened.
Why this gap?
Partly this gap exists because we haven’t discovered many of the species yet. Scientists assume that our planet has 10 million species, but we know less than 20 percent of them. Some species probably disappear without us ever knowing they existed. Read More…
