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The IUCN Red List is the global inventory assessing extinction risk of species, ranking them from Least Concern to Extinct based on population and threat data.
A Nature reassessment of 892 reef-building coral species classifies 340 of the 774 assessable ones, 44%, as threatened under IUCN Red List criteria. The findings predate the fourth global bleaching event of 2023-2025, as the authors themselves note.
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IPBES chair David Obura told AFP that a forecast record El Niño adds "a terrifying level of additional risk" for coral reefs. His Nature review, completed in 2020, put nearly half of species at elevated risk; a new count could pass 50%, he said.
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Fauna & Flora, which has worked on Georgia's Rioni River since 2017, reports catching more sturgeon in 2026 than in the previous eight years combined. The fish are plainly breeding, but without catch per hour of fishing the jump does not yet show a growing population.
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New England Aquarium aerial surveyors counted more than 2,000 animals across 15 species in a monument off Cape Cod, including rarely seen Chilean devil rays. One late-summer sighting puts the ray inside the monument but does not yet show how much the area's summer diversity depends on warm Gulf Stream water.
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Lingnan University researchers found that Lantau's endangered short-legged horned toads form their own genetic group, in a study of 19 animals. The team wants the island population managed as a separate conservation unit, while saying the evidence cannot yet establish a new species.
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Camera-trap photos of a male jaguar show the corridor linking Guatemala and Honduras is still in use, a kind of image Panthera says comes once a decade. One animal at one site confirms presence, but it cannot show that protection kept the route open.
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Australian bee researchers say only three of the country's more than 1,700 native bee species are on the national threatened species list. Their review blames thin research funding for the missing data and sets out a conservation plan built on behaviour studies and long-term monitoring.
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Researchers surveying 422 bird species at 1,410 sites in Borneo and Wallacea found that densely forested areas do not necessarily hold more bird diversity. They make a sound case for also judging forests by how closely related their birds are, though their public account stops short of effect sizes.
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Nottingham Trent researchers who tracked 7,200 species in 613 zoos over 30 years found rising extinction risk rarely put a species in more zoos. The authors say zoos need shared planning frameworks to weigh conservation value against space, cost and visitor appeal more consistently.
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Leopardus tilcayo of the Bolivian Yungas was counted inside Leopardus tigrinus until 38 sequenced genomes separated it. The living animal itself is known from two individuals, one of them a captive male.
Perspective Coverage
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The endangered listing rests on a model of what happens to wild-nesting colonies if beekeepers' swarms stop arriving. Its authors put the loss at about 56% over ten years, while some English populations hold steady.
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Eight years of surveys at 66 sites moved Wolffsohn's viscacha from Data Deficient to Endangered on Argentina's Red List. The listing carries no automatic legal protection.
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A new compilation of Namibian and South African sightings finds 95% of blue and fin whale observations came after 2012. The counts are tiny, and that is the useful part.
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