Endangered Species List Expands to 16,000,while we keep cutting down rainforest and burnin

Endangered Species List Expands to 16,000,while we keep cutting down rainforest and burning gas...!
?
In the update of its Red List of Threatened Species released today, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) says that more than 40 percent of species that have been assessed worldwide are threatened with extinction.
These include a quarter of the world's coniferous trees, an eighth of its birds, and one-third of its amphibians.

Also listed are a quarter of all the mammal species that were assessed for the survey.

For the first time, polar bears and hippopotamuses are now designated as threatened.

Polar bears, the IUCN said, are likely to become one of the most notable casualties of global warming, which is melting sea ice on which they roam in search of Arctic seals.

Without enough ice, the bears risk being trapped on land, where they face starvation. Or they may drown in attempts to swim long distances.

(See a National Geographic magazine feature about polar bears and global warming.)

Earlier this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it is considering adding polar bears to the U.S. endangered species list.

Although the decline in polar bear numbers is expected to be relatively slow, other animal populations have already crashed dramatically.

The hippopotamus, for example, has declined by 95 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1994, when 30,000 roamed wild.

Never before listed by the IUCN, hippos are now classified as "vulnerable" mainly because of unregulated hunting in the war-torn country.
Farther north in Africa, the dama gazelle of the Sahara region has suffered an 80 percent decline in the past decade because of uncontrolled hunting.

Nor are land animals the only ones experiencing such declines.
Among sea creatures, the IUCN took a close look at sharks and rays, finding that one-fifth of the 547 species it assessed are threatened with extinction, probably due to overfishing.

"Marine species are proving to be just as much at risk of extinction as their land-based counterparts," said Craig Hilton-Taylor of the IUCN Red List Unit in a statement.

"Unbiased" List

The Red List is the best worldwide system for ranking endangered species, even though it conveys no direct protection to any of the listed species, said Kieran Suckling, policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity, in Tucson, Arizona.

Other ranking systems, he said, are subject to political pressures that can skew the results.

"Here you have an unbiased, objective account," he said. "There's no guesswork and no political pressure. … The listings tend to focus conservation energy."

The Red List now contains 40,177 species, 16,119 of which are categorized as critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable.

Large as those numbers are, they represent only a fraction of the world's species, estimated to total somewhere between 10 million and 100 million.

Not All Bad News

The Red List update included good news for some species.

Of particular note, the IUCN found that swift conservation action has given Indian vultures a more hopeful future.

These birds, once numbering in the millions, had been accidentally poisoned by feeding on animal carcasses contaminated with a veterinary arthritis drug.

The drug, Hilton-Taylor said, has now been banned in India, and scientists are working to establish captive-breeding colonies that can be used to reintroduce the birds into the wild.

Also of note is the recovery of the white-tailed eagle, which was downlisted from "near threatened" to "least concern" due to increased protection efforts in Europe.

"These examples show that conservation measures are making a difference," Achim Steiner, the IUCN's director general said in a statement.

"It's not just the world's governments that need to be doing more," Hilton-Taylor said.

"It's everybody. Every little bit helps."

***********************
every litele bit eh..?
Well lets all start driving a whole lot less! and star using hydrogen as a fuel ( http://www.aquariusenergy.org)
Stop using chemical cleaning products(inc. air anything airesole PERIOD!)
Stop using pesticides, herbecides, fungacides, fertilisers , or GMOs in our housholds and communities
Stop eating as much fish products, and only line caught WILD fish
Stop eating amazonian raised beef and soy
Boycot products from countries that promote hunting endagered species
tune into http://www.greenpeace.org regularly and participate !
REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE,RETHINK, RESTORE, RESPECT



*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$


more on the rainforest and why we must ban soy, beef and tree products from the amazon.....

Amazon , Brazil — Amazon destruction has accelerated to record levels, according to figures released by the Brazilian government. The annual rate has reached 26,130 square km, the second highest ever - an area equivalent to about six football fields a minute are destroyed. Almost half of the deforestation occurred in the State of Mato Grosso, governed by the largest individual soy producer in the world, Blairo Maggi.
More than 70 percent of Amazon loss occurred between May and July 2004, when President Lula's Action Plan to Curb Deforestation had already been adopted. The Plan, which was presented in March 2004, took seven months of elaboration and had the participation of 13 Ministries committing resources, defining responsibilities and setting a timetable. During the same period, Lula's Government has celebrated the rapid expansion in grain production and world leadership in meat exports, with the Minister of Treasury Antonio Palocci declaring, "Agribusiness is the best business of Brazil. "

A national shame

Paulo Adario, our Amazon campaign coordinator, said, "Clearly Lula's administration has failed up to now to implement the Action Plan and to protect the Amazon. Although there have been positive measures taken by the Government, such as the creation of protected areas and demarcation of Indigenous lands, the fact that the annual average of deforestation has been more than 23,000 km2 for the last three years is simply unacceptable. This is a national shame."

The rape of the rainforest

Of the 12,576 square kilometres lost in the State of Mato Grosso, 4,176 km2 were authorised by the government. The rest was illegal. Maggi doesn't hide his opinion about deforestation: "A 40 percent increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here," Maggi said in an interview to The New York Times in September 2003, referring to the Amazon deforestation rate of the previous year. Last week the UK newspaper The Independent exposed Maggi as being "the man behind ... the rape of the rainforest." But Maggi has reacted angrily, "I can personally say that my company (Grupo Amaggi) has carried out no deforestation over the past few years. I think they (the newspapers) were heavy handed and they exaggerated," he said. However, Maggi is the largest soy producer in the world. The soya boom is responsible for much of the deforestation. "It is turning the rainforest into cattle feed. It is gross," said John Sauven, head of the rainforest campaign for Greenpeace UK.

Key culprits and solutions

"Agribusiness and illegal logging are key culprits of deforestation," says Adario. "Lula's administration is facing a fundamental contradiction: to fight Amazon deforestation or to promote the expansion of agribusiness to pay the Brazilian external debt. To make a real difference on the ground, the Government needs to restrict soy plantations only in areas already deforested, combat illegal logging, continue to create protected areas and effectively implement their own anti-deforestation Plan."

By allowing this level of Amazon destruction, the Government is also contributing to the devastating impacts of global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation and burning in the Amazon are the main Brazilian contributions to climate change and there is growing evidence that climate change is drying out the forests, creating a vicious cycle.
International — It is a globally known symbol: the golden arches can be seen in many countries around the world. But whatever the fast food giant wants you to believe the golden arches stand for, McDonald's today stands for rainforest destruction. And that is one very 'Unhappy Meal' for the planet.
The Amazon rainforest needs no introduction; the mere mention of its name conjures up images of a huge untouched wilderness bursting with amazing life. But to McDonald's and a handful of huge soya traders, the Amazon means something completely different. It means cheap land and cheap labour. Cheap land because it is often stolen, cheap labour because some of the people who work cutting down the forest or work on the farms in the Amazon are actually slaves. You heard it right, slaves.

'How is this possible,' you ask? Well it goes something like this.

The soya traders encourage farmers to cut down the rainforest and plant massive soya monocultures. The traders take the soya and ship it to Europe where it is fed to animals like chickens and pigs. The animals are then turned into fast food products like McDonald's McNuggets and many other products found in fast food outlets and supermarkets.
The journey from rainforest to restaurant might sound simple enough but it has taken a year-long investigation using satellite images, aerial surveillance, previously unreleased government documents and on-the-ground monitoring to expose. What we found was a global trade in soya from rainforest destruction in the Amazon to McDonald's fast food outlets and supermarkets across Europe.

"This crime stretches from the heart of the Amazon across the entire European food industry. Supermarkets and fast food giants, like McDonald's, must make sure their food is free from the links to the Amazon destruction, slavery and human rights abuses"
Greenpeace forests campaign co-ordinator, Gavin Edwards.


Most of the global trade in soya is controlled by a small number of massive traders: Cargill, Bunge and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). In Brazil, this cartel plays the role of bank to the farmers. Instead of providing loans they give farmers seed, fertiliser and herbicides in return for soya at harvest: Bunge alone provided the equivalent of nearly US$1 billion worth of seed, fertiliser and herbicides to Brazilian farmers in 2004.

This gives the companies indirect control over huge areas of land that used to be rainforest. Together, these three companies are responsible for around 60 percent of the total financing of soya production in Brazil.

The state of Mato Grosso is Brazil's worst in terms of deforestation and forest fires, accounting for nearly half of all the deforestation in the Amazon in 2003-04. In Mato Grosso, the governor, Blairo Maggi, is known locally as the 'Soya King'. His own massive soya company Grupo Andre Maggi controls much of the soya production in the state and since his election in 2002, forest destruction in Mato Grosso has increased by 30 percent.



Banks too have been caught up in the destruction of the Amazon. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, wrongly assessed a loan to Grupo Andre Maggi as being of 'low environmental risk,' despite evidence to the contrary. Other banks have also lent huge sums of money to the company without conducting their own environmental or social impact audits.

So far, Rabobank, the Netherlands' biggest agricultural bank has lent over US$330 million to Grupo Andre Maggi. Rabobank admitted that it didn't do its own assessment of the risk of the loans, simply accepting the (flawed) assessment of the IFC.

So fast food and supermarkets, soya traders and big banks are all trashing the Amazon rainforest.

If we can track soya beans more than 7,000km (4,400 miles) from farms in the Amazon to chicken products in Europe, there is no excuse for the food industry not to know where their feed comes from, and to demand the exclusion of Amazon soya from their supply chain.
educate our fellow humans
and lead by example!!!