生態新聞

An international group of researchers has issued a dire warning about the state of the world’s wild animals. A new report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists one in four land mammals as endangered, as well as one in three marine mammals. Life on Earth is disappearing fast with man inflicting most of the damage…. On land more species face oblivion because of loss of habitat, hunting and climate change while in the oceans pollution and the side effects of fishing are taking a huge toll [Telegraph]. 一個國際調查組織近日作出一個關於世界野生動物的可怕警告。世界自然保護聯盟指出，每四種陸上動物就有一種被列為瀕危動物，而海洋哺乳類動物則是每三種就有一種瀕危。地球上野生動物的生命因人類活動而快速消失……陸上動物因喪失棲息地、捕獵和氣候變化而消失，而污染和捕魚所引致的副作用則為海洋生物響起警鐘。 The new assessment — which took 1,700 experts in 130 countries a total of five years to complete — paints “a bleak picture,” leaders of the project wrote in a paper being published in the journal Science. The overview … covers all 5,487 wild species identified since 1500. It is the most thorough tally of land and marine mammals since 1996 [Washington Post]. 調查團團長於《Science》刊物中發表這歷時五年，動員1700名專家於130個城市中觀察所得出的最新報告。報告中涵蓋了由1500年起所確認的5487個物種。這是自1996年起，最詳細的一次海洋及陸地物種的調查。 The IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species lists 29 species that have been flagged as possibly extinct; that group includes animals like Cuba’s little earth hutia, a small rodent that hasn’t been spotted in the wild in almost 40 years. There are 188 mammals in the critically endangered category, including the Iberian lynx; only about 100 adult Iberian lynxes remain in the wild. The next threat category, endangered species, includes almost 450 species, including the Tasmanian devil, which has lost 60 percent of its population in the past decade due to an infectious face cancer. 世界自然保護聯盟的最高瀕危物種列表中，29種物種被認為可能已經絕種。當中包括如古巴的小地硬毛鼠，一種40年來都沒有在野外被觀察到的細小嚙齒類動物。除此之外，還有188種即將瀕危的哺乳類動物，包括在野外大約只餘下100頭的成年伊比利亞山貓。次一級的瀕危物種列表中有450個物種，包括塔斯馬尼亞惡魔，於最近10年因為感染性臉部癌而令到物種數目下跌百分之六十。 The estimate that one-quarter of mammalian species overall are threatened may be an under-estimate, the authors caution, as there is not enough data to make an assessment in more than 800 cases. The true figure could be nearer to one-third [BBC News]. 四份之一的哺乳類動物面臨瀕危其實也只是一個不能太確定的數字，因為報告中還有800個個案是不能肯定的，所以實際上可能是三份之一的物種瀕危也說不定