Author : Subhronil Introduction: According to the “Red List” (Bible for the conservation biologists and ecologists), compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), a huge part of our biotic world is suffering from severe biomass loss in terms of loss of habitable area and number of species. This loss is so severe that the entire ecosystem is under a critical crisis which needs to be studied and maintained to counteract the loss; this study involves categorization of organisms into several subgroups based on the severity of their loss. I will try to explain these categories in simple way. Nomenclature:
This categorization involves multilevel grouping of ‘evaluated’ organisms (organisms which have been studied for the aforesaid purpose) shown in the figure (figure redrawn from http://www.iucnredlist.org/about/introduction). The most severe of this group is called Extinct (EX; i.e., we have killed all the individuals of this species and no more living individual can be found anywhere in the world). A familiar example would be a Sabretooth or a Mammoth (remember the movie Ice Age?). A relatively less severe category is called Extinct in the Wild (EW), i.e, living individuals of those species can only be found in their non-natural habitat like zoo and other captivities. Some relatively luckier species are either Critically Endangered (CR; i.e., only few individuals are living sporadically in the wild and are near to become extinct in the wild [example: Javan Rhino]), Endangered (EN; i.e., only few individuals left and their number are decreasing rapidly [sea otters]), or Vulnerable (VU; i.e., not many individuals left alive in the wild and their habitat [where they live] are decreasing). Reasons: Reasons behind this criticality? Other studied groups are either least or not affected (NT and LC, simultaneously). Obviously, humans [the killers] belong to the LC category. An Anthropocentric view about those concerned species can be stated as: Least Concerned (LC): can be killed for fun/food/money in future Near Threatened (NT): need to kill more of it for food/fun/money Vulnerable (VU): very tasty and/or of high market value Endangered (EN): very very tasty and/or of high market value Critically Endangered (CR): will kill the last few members too Well, almost all of them are related to Humans! Under this series, in our following articles we will be talking about many of these unlucky guys and will try to show how they are doing these days and how human are silently or openly killing them with pride! Feel free to provide your views! |
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