LONDON: According to new data released on Thursday, the state of the world’s wildlife may be worse than scientists have previously estimated. Although more than 147,000 plants and animals have had their status evaluated by scientists, many species are still deemed to have insufficient evidence to provide a complete assessment.
As a result, those species haven’t been added to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s annual update to its list of threatened or endangered species (IUCN). The ocean’s toothy predator, the killer whale, as well as the pink fairy armadillo of Argentina, and approximately 200 bat species worldwide are among those under-appreciated creatures.
According to a group of international scientists who used data on environmental conditions and human threats to map patterns of extinction threats among assessed species, the absence of data itself can be a warning sign in some cases, indicating that the species may be difficult to find because its population has declined.