The status of “threatened” has been extended to 15 new species, including the Pacific bluefin tuna, the Chinese pufferfish and a chameleon from Tanzania.
What do a tuna, a chameleon, an eel and a butterfly have in common? The fact of having been included in the Red List of the world's most threatened species, drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The list, which already counted over 22,000 species at risk of extinction, now gains 15 new candidates for oblivion.
The main cause is habitat loss driven by relentless and rapacious human activity: fishing, deforestation, mining and intensive agriculture are bringing entire ecosystems to the point of collapse, to say nothing of climate change. Among the new species classified as vulnerable on the Red List is the Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis); owing to its prized flesh — a single specimen can be worth up to 100,000 dollars — this fish is being caught unsustainably and without regulation. Experts say rules are needed to prevent the capture of younger individuals.
For the same reason, the Chinese pufferfish (Takifugu chinensis), considered a delicacy in Asian cuisine, is disappearing: over the past 40 years this bizarre creature has undergone a decline of 99.99 per cent. It may already be too late, however, to save the world's largest earwig (Labidura herculeana), the insect endemic to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean; measuring up to 80 mm in length, compared with 15 mm for its European counterpart, it has been declared extinct. The same fate has befallen a small snail (Plectostoma sciaphilum) found on a single limestone hill in Malaysia, which was destroyed by quarrying.
"Every update of the IUCN Red List makes us realise that our planet is constantly losing its incredible biodiversity — declared Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Director General of IUCN — primarily because of our destructive actions to satisfy our ever-growing appetite for resources." Protected areas are an effective tool for reversing this alarming trend. "Experts warn that threatened species that are poorly represented in protected areas are declining twice as fast as those that are well represented."