Over 700 species to enter list of endangered and extinct POSTED AT 07:03 ON 07 JULY 2013

SAO PAULO - The number of extinct and endangered species on planet Earth continues to grow because of human activities, according to the new version of the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), released this week. Over 700 species of plants and animals have been added to the list in three categories of threat, bringing the total to 20,934.

Among them are several species of conifers (trees with flowers in the shape of cones or cones, as the pine trees), which are the largest and oldest living things on earth. The situation of the whole group was reassessed and found that 34% of coniferous species are threatened with extinction.

One of the most at risk is the Araucaria pine or do Paraná, classified as critically endangered since 2006. Species typical of the coldest regions of higher altitude and the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, she had the hit area reduced dramatically in recent decades because of the conversion of native forests in areas of agriculture and forestry.

Now, with global warming, it may be that the worse thing more to this tree, which prefers cooler temperatures. "Modeling the impact of climate change indicates that by the end of this century the species could be extinct in the wild," said the botanist Carlos Joly, State University of Campinas (Unicamp), in São Paulo.

Joly points out that the lists of threatened species (among which IUCN is a global reference) are an indispensable scientific tool for biodiversity conservation.

"The newly created Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), whose preliminary proposal of action plan from 2014 to 2018, was placed on public consultation last week, use this review as the IUCN, the first global analysis provided for end of 2018, "he says.

The IPBES was created in 2010 by the United Nations (UN) to do for biodiversity what the famous IPCC does for climate change. Joly is a director of the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel organ.

Statistics

Among the 20,934 species considered endangered in the new list, 4,090 are in the "critically endangered" (137 more than the previous). Some even receive a note as "possibly extinct", when they are not seen in the wild for some time. How, for example, a cave shrimp from Florida who moved to this category. The group of freshwater shrimp was evaluated completely for the first time in this review: 28% are threatened.

For Herton Escobar (State Agency)