Pages tagged with “extinction”

• Risk of Extinction for the World’s Reptiles

  A study has been carried out estimating, for the first time, the global extinction risk of reptiles by using a short-cut method by sampling 1,500 species (16% of all known reptile species). This study included lizards, snakes, turtles/ tortoises, amphisbaenians (“worm lizards”) and crocodiles.   While, overall reptiles are less threatened than amphibians (the most highly threatened group), they are…

• Action Plan for Amphibians

  A new report on amphibian conservation has been published in Surveys and Perspectives Integrating Environment and Society (S.A.P.I.E.N.S) on what is needed to put action into the Amphibian Conservation Action Plan. This report was written by staff of the Amphibian Survival Alliance, one of our project partners, along with other amphibian experts. Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate group, with…

• Ocean Health Index

  Anyone who has read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will know what the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is: 42. It took the fictional supercomputer Deep Thought 7.5 million years to come up with that answer. A group of marine scientists and conservationists have taken rather less time to come up with the…

• Species

  ‘If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering’. Aldo Leopold, Round River, 1953 A large proportion of research and financial support for conservation is directed towards ‘charismatic’ species.…