Over 700 threatened species not protected

JOHANNESBURG: Over 700 endangered animal species inhabit ranges that have no formal protection, underscoring the need to set aside more land globally for conservation, a new study showed on Thursday. The study, unveiled at the 5th World Parks Congress in the South African port city of Durban, also says that many protected areas are too small to conserve threatened species. “At least 223 bird, 140 mammal and 346 amphibian species threatened with extinction have no protection whatsoever over any part of their ranges,” said the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Centre for Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS), which did the study. “Without an immediate and strategic expansion of the protected area system, scientists expect a major wave of extinctions within the next few decades,” they said in a statement. Critically threatened animals living in a completely unprotected habitat include the Comoro black flying fox, a huge fruit bat found on the Comoros Islands off Africa’s east coast, and the Wuchuan frog, found only in a cave in Guizhou, China. Many biologists claim that the planet is on the verge of a so-called “sixth mass extinction” — the first since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. Around 12 percent of the world’s surface is officially protected but many reserves are so-called “paper parks” which in fact offer few safeguards to the resident flora and fauna. And many protected areas are too small to be viable. In conservation, size counts, with one widely accepted school of scientific thought holding that the smaller the habitat, the fewer varieties of species it can contain. “Many existing protected areas are so small in size as to be virtually ineffective in conserving species, placing another 943, and probably many more bird, mammal and amphibian species, at risk,” said the IUCN and the CABS. The study — called the “global gap analysis” — was based on the work of thousands of scientists and dozens of institutions around the world. The scientists compared a map of all protected areas for which reliable information was available to maps of more than 11,000 species ranges. They then identified places where species live without any protection. The 10-day World Parks Congress, which ends next Wednesday, is focused on assessing progress on setting aside protected areas and mapping out future strategies for preserving the planet’s natural heritage. —Reuters

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