Opinion - Editorials   

More species in the red

The 2007 Red List of endangered plants, animals, birds, and sea life released by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) offers a gloomy forecast for many species that make the earth unique. If unrelenting pressure from human activity continues, these evolutionary marvels, like others before them, will become extinct sooner rather than later at least in the wild. Global populations of several species have declined so dramatically that the IUCN has added 188 species to last yea r’s tally of 16,118 that may be wiped out in the wild. The animals facing serious threat include the Western lowland gorilla in Africa, the Sumatran and Bornean orangutans, and India’s gharial, a reptile belonging to the crocodile order. The gharial population has come down as a result of net fishing and irreversible loss of habitat. Their numbers have plunged by about 60 per cent in the last decade and their habitat has shrunk in the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Mahanadi rivers in India and Nepal. The gharial is now critically endangered — just a step away from extinction in the wild. The rescue of the gharial now depends on whether the damagingly huge impact of human activity — the construction of dams, barrages, and irrigation canals — on habitats is recognised. The absence of far-sighted action is resulting in species that evolved over millions of years vanishing owing to pressure from a single species, our own. This tragedy has been described by naturalist E.O.Wilson as the silent haemorrhaging of the world’s biodiversity.

Governments, international organisations, and scientists view the IUCN Red List — statured by well-defined criteria and now comprising a total of 41,415 species — as a vitally important index of the state of nature. The IUCN methodology also helps to estimate the health of species at national and regional levels. But it is important to remember that many more species that may be similarly endangered do not make it to such lists on account of data deficiencies and therefore get low priority in conservation measures. Researchers reported in Current Science in 2005 that some Western Ghats plants listed in various Red Lists, including that of the IUCN, were abundant in forest sites in comparison with other endemic plants. Such findings do not detract from the tremendous value of the IUCN list. On the contrary, they draw attention to the need for even more intensive research into the state of India’s natural heritage. The wider message from the IUCN Red List should be read as the need to have a land use plan for a fast-growing India and above all the political and social will to enforce it.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

More species in the red
The wheat puzzle
Rights activists: persecution and resistance
Corrections and clarifications
EU should stand firm on Kosovo
Faith and history
On the project
Unwarranted
We are going to take people back to the moon: Michael Griffin

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu