Fish in the Oder and certain insects: From the point of view of the environmental foundation WWF, stocks in Germany are also among the losers of the year in the animal world. This emerges from the organization’s year-end balance sheet on Thursday. With endangered animals from other regions of the world, the selected losers are therefore representative of the fate of thousands of species. More than 42,100 animal and plant species are now on the Red List as threatened. However, the WWF also names winners – and thus examples of successful protection.
When loser the WWF lists this, among other things reindeer: The world’s largest population of wild reindeer in the Taimyr region in the Russian Arctic was one million animals in 2000. It is now a quarter of that. In particular, the climate crisis and poaching threatened the animals.
the hoverfly is threatened in Europe by land use change, pesticides and the climate crisis. Around 315 of 890 species of important pollinators are threatened in Europe, according to the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
For the white rhino Poachers in particular pose a threat. In Africa, stocks have fallen from 20,600 to almost 16,000 in the past nine years.
Steps to better protect the emperor penguins were absent in 2022, criticizes the WWF. “With current greenhouse gas emissions, between 80 and 100 percent of all known emperor penguin colonies are at risk of near disappearance by 2100.” Also Oder fish and sturgeons the WWF is one of the big losers in 2022. The “man-made catastrophe” in the Oder in the summer was also a setback for the reintroduction of the Baltic sturgeon because thousands of young fish died. There are also problems elsewhere: With a view to IUCN data, the WWF writes that the sword sturgeon has been completely extinct since this year, the Yangtze sturgeon in the wild and the smooth dusky sturgeon in the EU are considered extinct.
The humpback whale is no longer considered threatened in Australia
At the same time, the WWF also names a few winnerabout the tiger: Stocks have recovered in several countries, they say. Nepal is particularly successful. But stocks are also growing in Bhutan, Russia, China and India.
Recently, better protection of some species of sharks and rays decided in order not to jeopardize stocks through international trade. That was an important decision, according to the WWF, because a third of the more than 1,200 shark and ray species are threatened. By far the greatest threat is overfishing.
Of the Humpback Whale in Australia was removed from the local list of endangered species because of the significant increase in numbers. However, more protection is needed in the face of dangers such as fishing, shipping and environmental pollution, the WWF demanded.
The stocks of Loggerhead Turtle recovered, reports the WWF Foundation. In the USA and on Cape Verde, more nests have recently been found than in decades.
The WWF emphasized that in the case of further rapidly increasing destruction of nature also people were among the big losers. The agreement on biodiversity that was passed before Christmas at the World Nature Summit in Montreal, Canada, gives hope. “The implementation has to work now. We don’t get a second chance to save our planet,” confirmed WWF board member Christoph Heinrich.