The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced its Red List’s final update of 2019 on December 10th. The Red List classifies animal species on their conservation status and ranks them based on their risk of extinction.
The recent update increases the number of shark species on the Red List from 58 to 69. Global overfishing and climate change threaten these species with extinction. Also, the Red List update saw the status of 29 shark species change.
Five of these species are attracting the most attention. The pelagic thresher shark and dusky shark have changed from Vulnerable to Endangered. Alarmingly, the great hammerhead and scalloped hammerhead both increased from Endangered to Critically Endangered. Lastly, the oceanic whitetip has seen an astonishing decline from Vulnerable in 2015 to Critically Endangered.
The newly released updates are part of a larger IUCN project to re-assess shark and ray populations by summer 2020. Therefore, given the devastating effects of overfishing, the situation will likely worsen if we do not take any action.
References
IUCN. (2019, December 11). Species recoveries bring hope amidst the biodiversity crisis – IUCN Red List. Retrieved from https://www.iucn.org/news/species/201912/species-recoveries-bring-hope-amidst-biodiversity-crisis-iucn-red-list.
