Red List: 31 Species Newly Listed As Extinct; Freshwater Dolphins In Global Trouble, Wisent OK

[hatrack]

Europe’s biggest land mammal, the European bison, is beginning to recover in numbers thanks to conservation efforts and breeding programmes, according to an update on threatened species. By the early years of the last century, the once abundant European bison could be found only in captivity in a few places, and it was only after the second world war that animals were reintroduced into the wild in small numbers. By 2003 there were 1,800 in the wild, and by last year the number had more than tripled to a population of more than 6,200 in 47 free-ranging herds in Poland, Belarus and Russia.

EDIT

The update showed continued losses of key species in vital ecosystems. Freshwater dolphins are now threatened with extinction all over the world, with harmful fishing practices, pollution, river damming and deliberate killing increasing problems for key species, according to the IUCN. The tucuxi, a small grey dolphin found in the Amazon, has become a bycatch casualty of the increasing use of gill nets in the river system. These are curtains of fishing net that hang in the water, entangling the dolphins alongside the target fish. The IUCN advises that they should be eliminated and a ban on deliberate killing of the tucuxi should be enforced in the region. Reducing the number of dams would also help the species, which is now classed as endangered.

EDIT

Altogether, 31 species have been newly listed as extinct in Wednesday’s red list update, including three frogs of central America: the Chiriqui harlequin frog, which has not been recorded since 1996 despite extensive searches, and whose disappearance probably owes to the spread of diseases caused by chytrid fungus; the wizened harlequin frog, not recorded since 1986 and another likely casualty of chytridiomycosis; and craugostor myllomyllon, which has no common name and is known only from a single female specimen collected in 1978.

Plants are also coming under increasing threat, and the IUCN sounded a warning on the wild progenitor of the farmed macadamia nut, as three wild macadamia species are now threatened with extinction. The discovery comes from a comprehensive assessment of the Protea family of flowering plants of the southern hemisphere, to which macadamia belongs, that found at least 637 of the 1,464 known Protea species were vulnerable or endangered.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/09/bison-recovering-but-31-other-species-now-extinct-finds-red-list

[Rhiannon12866]

1. Devastating news!