IUCN reveals decline of status of plants and animals

The total number of species declared officially extinct is 784 and a further 65 are only found in captivity or cultivation. Of the 40,177 species assessed using the IUCN Red List criteria, 16,119 are now listed as threatened with extinction.
This includes one in three amphibians and a quarter of the world's coniferous trees, on top of the one in eight birds and one in four mammals known to be in jeopardy, says IUCN report released world-wide.
The 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species brings into sharp focus the ongoing decline of the earth's biodiversity and the impact mankind is having upon life on earth.
Widely recognised as the most authoritative assessment of the global status of plants and animals, it provides an accurate measure of progress, or lack of it, in achieving the globally agreed target to significantly reduce the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.
"The 2006 IUCN Red List shows a clear trend: biodiversity loss is increasing, not slowing down," said Achim Steiner, Director General of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
"The implications of this trend for the productivity and resilience of ecosystems and the lives and livelihoods of billions of people who depend on them are far-reaching. Reversing this trend is possible, as numerous conservation success stories have proven. To succeed on a global scale, we need new alliances across all sectors of society. Biodiversity cannot be saved by environmentalists alone - it must become the responsibility of everyone with the power and resources to act," he added.
Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are set to become one of the most notable casualties of global warming. The impact of climate change is increasingly felt in polar regions, where summer sea ice is expected to decrease by 50-100% over the next 50-100 years. Dependent upon Arctic ice-floes for hunting seals and highly specialised for life in the Arctic marine environment, polar bears are predicted to suffer more than a 30 percent population decline in the next 45 years.
Previously listed by IUCN as a conservation dependent species, the polar bear moves into the threatened categories and has been classified as vulnerable. Humankind's global footprint on the planet extends even to regions that would appear to be far removed from human influence. Deserts and drylands may appear relatively untouched, but their specially adapted animals and plants are also some of the rarest and most threatened. Slowly but surely deserts are being emptied of their diverse and specialised wildlife, almost unnoticed.
The main threat to desert wildlife is unregulated hunting followed by habitat degradation. The dama gazelle (Gazella dama) of the Sahara, already listed as Endangered in 2004, has suffered an 80 percent crash in numbers over the past 10 years because of uncontrolled hunting parties, and has been upgraded to critically endangered. Other Saharan gazelle species are also threatened and they seem destined to suffer the fate of the scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah) and become extinct in the wild.
Asian antelopes face similar pressures. The goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) is widespread across the deserts and semi-deserts of central Asia and the Middle East and until a few years ago had substantial populations in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Both countries have seen sharp declines because of habitat loss and illegal hunting for meat. The gazelle has been reclassified from Near Threatened to Vulnerable.