Study: Wildlife at risk beyond scientists’ understanding

Scientists have assessed the status of more than 147,000 species of plants and animals, although thousands of species have been described as “data deficient” to allow a full assessment.

As a result, this species is not included in the list of threatened or endangered species, which is updated every year by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Nature.

Among the species whose status has not been adequately assessed is the killer whale, which has prominent teeth. Ocean Armadillo in Argentina and nearly 200 species Bat All over the world.

But sometimes the lack of data is a sign of danger, meaning the absence of numbers makes them harder to find, said an international team of scientists who used the data. environment and human threats to map patterns of extinction among assessed species.

The study, published in the journal Communications Biology, found that scientists had inadequately assessed the condition of 7,699 species, and estimated that about 56 percent of them faced critical conditions. Destruction.

This is nearly double the 28 percent estimated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature for “threatened” species.

There are millions of plant and animal species that have not been studied by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and scientists estimate that about a million are at risk of extinction, according to a 2019 report by the United Nations Government Science and Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Jan Burkeld, an ecologist at the Norwegian University of Science andTechnology Many plants and animals “incomplete data” mean “a small number of species living in remote areas,” who led the study, with a large portion in the middle. Africa Madagascar and South Asia.

He said the state of nature “will be worse than we know if these predictions are correct.”