Out of the 71,576 evaluated, 21,286 are considered threatened

Nov 27, 2013 21:36 GMT  ·  By
Several hundred species added to the "threatened" category on the IUCN's Red List
   Several hundred species added to the "threatened" category on the IUCN's Red List

Yesterday, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, for short) rolled out an updated version of its Red List.

The good news is that some species, such as the leatherback turtle, are no longer critically endangered.

The bad news is that several hundred species have been added to the “threatened” category. According to Mongabay, the IUCN now considers a total of 21,286 species as threatened.

Of these, 352 were added to the list this past summer.

All in all, the latest version of the organization's Red List evaluates 71,576 species of the nearly 2 million thus far documented by science.

Of these, 61 are extinct in the wild; 4,286 are critically endangered and 6,451 are endangered. The remainder are threatened, of least concern or doing just fine.

Commenting on these numbers, Jane Smart, the current global director of the IUCN Biodiversity Conservation Group, said that, “This IUCN Red List update shows some fantastic conservation successes, which we must learn from, for future conservation efforts.”

“However, the overall message remains bleak. With each update, whilst we see some species improving in status, there is a significantly larger number of species appearing in the threatened categories. The world must urgently scale up efforts to avert this devastating trend,” the conservationist added.