Green Options

Portuguese environmentalists have condemned the killing of the country’s last remaining nesting male Iberian Imperial Eagle.

The bird, also known as the Spanish Imperial Eagle (Aquila adalberti), is one of the three rarest birds of prey on the planet, with only around 400 surviving, and is classified as ‘vulnerable to extinction’ in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

A comprehensive, international survey released today, showed that half of all 5,487 mammal populations are declining.

Just today, data from a global survey was revealed at a meeting of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Barcelona, Spain.  1,700 researchers took part in the survey and named habitat loss and hunting as the major causes of the current, mass extinction.

Jan Schipper, who led the team, said: “Mammals are declining faster than we thought — one in four species is threatened with extinction worldwide.”

He said that land animals in Asia have been the hardest hit, where almost 80% of the primates are at risk.  Other mammals at risk across the globe include the blue whale, the bumblebee bat, the Caspian seal and the Tasmanian Devil.

Scientists currently have data for 4,651 species of mammals.  According to this study, 1,139 of these species face the threat of extinction.