31 species are extinct, and thousands more endangered

Brut America

Thirty-one species extinct, thousands of species endangered, all caused by human activity…  This is the latest update from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Transcript

00:00Experts have been gathering data for the last few years now, and they have worked out that

00:14the Takushi has undergone more than a 50% population reduction in the last 30 years.

00:20And so that then moves it into the endangered category.

00:32We have the dams, the fishing activities, and the direct hunting of the dolphins, which

00:37are the major threats to it.

00:50The world's biodiversity is under huge pressures, and we are losing species at a very rapid

00:55rate, much higher than the normal natural background rate.

01:05The red list is the key tool that we use for monitoring the status of biodiversity

01:10around the world.

01:11It's what we call a barometer of life, if you like.

01:24All the causes are because of human activity.

01:26So they range from things like habitat loss, because of expanding agriculture to feed people,

01:32or urbanization to house people, large commercial areas.

01:37You have associated activities related to that, so pollution, particularly oil pollution,

01:42pesticides, insecticides, herbicides have a huge impact on other species.

01:45So invasive plants and animals are a huge problem for other species, for nature species.

01:51Climate change is becoming a real issue in many parts of the world.

02:03The red list does have lots of bad news stories, with many species in decline.

02:09But there are also some positive, upbeat, optimistic stories, which show that we can

02:14turn things around.

02:15So the European bison, for example, is a really good, positive news story, which is a species

02:20that was almost extinct, it went extinct in the wild, it was still kept in zoos.

02:26But since then, we've been able to reintroduce them back into the wild, and we now have a

02:30population of free-ranging animals and 47 herds, over 6,000 animals in 10 countries

02:36in Europe.

02:37So that shows what is possible.

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