ICUN - Facts and figures on Biodiversity

I have much to post on this blog when I can find the time... until then quickly sharing something found via twitter on this website:

IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature, helps the world find
pragmatic solutions to our most pressing environment and development challenges

IUCN solutions

IUCN carries out comprehensive research on the status of biodiversity. It runs projects to protect specific species, manage and restore national parks and other protected areas; and promotes the sustainable use of natural resources. IUCN also provides the knowledge, standards and tools for biodiversity conservation for governments, community organizations, the United Nations and business. Learn mor

IUCN - Facts and figures on biodiversity

Facts and figures on biodiversity

01 January 2012 | Article

Discover more about biodiversity and its impact on our lives.

Species - our food and medecine

• While most people depend mainly on domesticated species for their dietary needs, some 200 million depend on wild species for at least part of their food.
• More than 60 wild species have been used to improve the world’s 13 major crops by providing genes for pest resistance, improved yield, and enhanced nutrition.
• Since agriculture began about 12,000 years ago, roughly 7,000 plant species have been used for human consumption.
• Amphibians play a vital role in ecosystems, are indicators of environmental health, and are ‘hopping pharmacies’ being used in the search for new medicines. Yet 41% of amphibian species are threatened with extinction.
• In some countries, medicinal plants and animals provide most of the drugs people use, and even in technologically-advanced countries like the USA, half of the 100 most-prescribed drugs originate from wild species.
• More than 70,000 different plant species are used in traditional and modern medicine.

Nature’s services

• Production of at least one third of the world’s food, including 87 of the 113 leading food crops, depends on pollination carried out by insects, bats and birds. This ecosystem service is worth over US$ 200 billion per year.
• A square kilometre of coastal ecosystem such as mangroves forests can store up to five times more carbon than the equivalent area of mature tropical forests. But these areas are being destroyed three to four times faster than forests, releasing substantial amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the ocean, and contributing to climate change.
• Wild species are important in pest regulation. Bats, toads, birds, snakes, and so on consume vast numbers of the major animal pests found on crops or in forests.
• A single colony of Mexican Free-tailed Bat eats more than 9,000 kg of insects per night, targeting especially Corn Earthworms and Fall Armyworms, both major crop predators. Yet 18% of bat species are threatened with extinction.
• A single brood of woodpeckers can eat 8,000-12,000 harmful insect pupae per day, helping to maintain the health of forests, whilst in fruit plantations, insectivorous birds can make the difference between a bumper crop or a costly failure.

Human impact

• Overfishing has reduced some commercial fish stocks by more than 90%.
• The Giant Manta Ray is the largest living ray, which can grow to more than seven metres in width. Manta Ray products have a high value in international trade and targeted fisheries hunt them for their valuable gill rakers used in traditional Chinese medicine.
• In China, 78 million dryland cashmere goats supply up to 75% of the world’s cashmere fibre.
• Eighty five percent of sturgeon, one of the oldest families of fishes in existence, valued around the world for their precious roe, are at risk of extinction.

Conservation success

• The regal Arabian Oryx which was hunted to near extinction, is now facing a more secure future thanks to captive breeding and reintroduction efforts. Its wild population now stands at 1,000 individuals.
• The Southern White Rhino subspecies has increased from a population of less than 100 at the end of the 19th century to an estimated wild population of over 20,000.
• The status of Przewalski’s Horse has improved from Critically Endangered to Endangered. Originally, it was listed as Extinct in the Wild in 1996, but thanks to a captive breeding reintroduction programme, the population is now estimated at more than 300.
• The Campbell Island Teal has benefitted from a massive programme to eradicate rats, plus captive-breeding of remaining individuals. The species has now returned to New Zealand’s Campbell Island and the majority of birds are now thriving, resulting in a reclassification of the threat status to Endangered.

Awe and wonder

• Tourists spend billions of dollars every year to watch birds or whales, or witness wildlife spectacles such as the great annual migrations in the Serengeti ecosystem of Tanzania and Kenya where 1.5 million wildebeest, 500,000 Thomson’s gazelle and 200,000 zebra cross the plain.
• Visitors to national parks, are drawn by the wildlife they see, and the thriving diving industry is largely based on the species of coral, fish, and other marine species that provide a colourful spectacle.
• King penguins are found in their thousands in the sub-Antarctic Crozet archipelago, which is nicknamed the “25 million bird island”. The density of the marine bird population there reaches a staggering 60 tonnes/km².

Into the unknown

• The oceans cover 70% of the planet but we know so little about life within them.
• A team of scientists including from IUCN are exploring seamounts—underwater mountains which rise to at least 1,000 metres above the sea floor. Seamounts are home to a rich biodiversity and act as a type of ‘bed and breakfast’ for deep sea predators such as sharks but face many serious threats from human activities.
• 
  

• Biodiversity glossary

  Here are some important terms which will help you understand biodiversity conservation.

  • Biodiversity: the variability among living organisms - animals, plants, their habitats and their genes - from all sources including terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are part. This includes diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems.
     
  • Biome: Major ecological community, a division of the world’s vegetation that corresponds to a particular climate and is characterized by certain types of plants and animals, for example, tropical rain forest or desert.
     
  • Drivers of biodiversity loss: Any natural or human-induced factor that directly or indirectly causes biodiversity loss.
     
  • Ecosystem: a community of plants, animals and smaller organisms that live, feed, reproduce and interact in the same area or environment. Ecosystems have no fixed boundaries; a single lake, a watershed, or an entire region could be considered an ecosystem.
     
  • Ecosystem services: the benefits people obtain from the environment. Ecosystem services are the transformation of natural assets (soil, plants and animals, air and water) into things that we value. They can be viewed as provisioning such as food and water;regulating, for example, flood and disease control; cultural such as spiritual, recreational, and cultural benefits; or supporting like nutrient cycling that maintain the conditions for life on Earth. Ecosystem ‘goods’ include food, medicinal plants, construction materials, tourism and recreation, and wild genes for domestic plants and animals.
     
  • Endemic: Restricted to a particular area. Used to describe a species or organism that is confined to a particular geographical region, for example, an island or river basin.
     
  • Habitat: The place or type of site where an organism or population naturally occurs.
     
  • Habitat change: Change in the local environmental conditions in which a particular organism lives. Habitat change can occur naturally through droughts, disease, fire, hurricanes, mudslides, volcanoes, earthquakes, slight increases or decreases in seasonal temperature or precipitation, etc. However, it is generally induced by human activities such as land use change and physical modification of rivers or water withdrawal from rivers.
     
  • Invasive Alien Species: a species introduced outside its normal distribution. Its establishment and spread modify ecosystems, habitats, or species.
     
  • Land cover: The physical coverage of land, usually expressed in terms of vegetation cover or lack of it. The human use of a piece of land for a certain purpose (such as irrigated agriculture or recreation) influences land cover.
     
  • Taxon: Category of organisms, any of the groups to which organisms are assigned according to the principles of taxonomy, including subspecies, species, genus, family, order, class, and phylum.