400 new species 'at risk of extinction'

A poached baby Grauer's gorilla is pictured at a gorilla orphan centre in eastern Congo. A quarter of the world's mammals are at risk of extinction, according to a new report. Source: AP

MORE than 400 plants and animals were added to a "Red List" of species at risk of extinction, raising the alarm as more than 70 environment ministers met for a global conference.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) updated its authoritative and widely referenced list monitoring biodiversity on Earth and said a total of 20,219 species were now at risk of dying out.

The report showed that 83 per cent of Madagascar's 192 palm species, which the poor rely on heavily for food and housing construction, are now at risk of extinction.

New additions to the threatened list include the large Egyptian dab lizard and the Sichuan Taimen, a fish species endemic to China.

Two invertebrates, a cockroach from the Seychelles and a freshwater snail called Little Flat-Top found in the US state of Alabama, have moved into the extinct category since the last update of the bi-annual survey in June.

"The figures are going up," IUCN global director for biodiversity conservation Jane Smart told journalists in Hyderabad, southern India, where the UN Convention on Biological Diversity conference is taking place.

A quarter of the world's mammals, 13 per cent of birds, 41 per cent of amphibians and 33 per cent of reef-building corals are at risk of extinction, said the report released at the conference.

More than 70 environment ministers met at the start of high-level talks on halting the depletion of Earth's natural resources, with pressure for them to put up money to match their political pledges.

The gathering comes two years after UN countries approved a 20-point plan at a conference in Japan for reversing the worrying decline in plant and animal species that humans depend on for food, shelter and livelihoods.

Experts says as much as $US440 billion ($429 billion) per year would be needed to meet the targets for turning back biodiversity loss by 2020.

"The cost of inaction is something that people have only just begun to appreciate," warned UN Environment Program executive director Achim Steiner.

"When you run out of water, when you run out of arable land... and your rivers run dry, when your lakes silt up, when your fisheries collapse, then it is often too late to start talking about the value of biodiversity ecosystems."

The three-day ministers' meeting from Wednesday to Friday comes at the end of two weeks of negotiations by senior officials from 184 parties to the conference - talks that delegates say have become stuck on the question of financing.

The last CBD conference in Japan set a series of targets for 2020, which include halving the rate of habitat loss, expanding water and land areas under conservation, preventing the extinction of species on the threatened list, and restoring at least 15 percent of degraded ecosystems.

Environmental economist Pavan Sukhdev said that an expert panel advising negotiators had concluded that between $US150 billion-$US440 billion would be needed annually to meet these goals, dubbed the Aichi biodiversity targets.

Current conservation spending is estimated at about $US10 billion per year, with some delegates in Hyderabad noting that donor funding for conservation, particularly from European countries, is at risk at a time of economic austerity.

"The critical issue really is how to mobilise the necessary financial, technical and human resources," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the gathering yesterday.

The convention, to which 193 countries are signatories, marks its 20th anniversary this year.

In that time, it has already missed one key deadline when it failed to meet the target set to halt biodiversity loss by 2010.

"Obviously to some extent a financial crisis in many of the traditional donor countries is playing into the negotiations," said Mr Steiner told AFP of the Hyderabad talks. 

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