Endangered Species Facts
Endangered species usually refers to animal and plant species that have a high risk of going extinct in the wild.
An increase in the global population, along with the habitat destruction, including a changing climate, that accompanies modern economic development, has created great stresses on the world's animal and plant life.
A variety of public and private organizations keep track on the status of potentially endangered and endangered species?
In the United States, for example, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) reports on the endangered and threatened status of animal and plant life arranged into four categories. Within those four categories the 2010 number of species considered endangered or threatened is as follows:
- Vertebrate Animals: 379 records of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes
- Invertebrate Animals: 198 records of clams, snails, insects, arachnids, crustaceans
- Flowering Plants: 718 records Non-Flowering Plants: 31 records of conifers and cycads, ferns and allies, lichens
On a global scale, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) researches and collects statistics on bidiversity and population statistics for the natural world.
Their Red List of threatened species provides facts on the status of individual species, genera and families, organized in an easy to use data base.
According to the 2009 update, "17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed species are threatened with extinction".
When the species are grouped into defined categories, IUCN scientists estimate that all of the endangered species break down into "21 percent of all known mammals, 30 percent of all known amphibians, 12 percent of all known birds, and 28 percent of reptiles, 37 percent of freshwater fishes, 70 percent of plants, 35 percent of invertebrates".
The links in the box point to additional information on various endangered plants and animals.
© 2001-2010. Patricia A. Michaels.