LEMURS ARE IN TROUBLE. OF the 113 described species and subspecies of lemur – all of which live exclusively in the forests of Madagascar – 98 per cent are threatened with extinction.
It’s a bleak statistic, but a helpful one. Because it’s only by being armed with this knowledge about the conservation status of lemurs that we can begin to address the challenges they face.
We have this information at our fingertips thanks to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), whose Red List of Threatened Species offers the world’s most comprehensive overview of the conservation status of animals, fungi and plants. There are other lists of threatened species out there: national and regional lists used to guide government policy; and lists focusing on particular groups of animals or plants, pulled together by NGOs such as the RSPB. These play an important role in directing conservation efforts in jurisdictions around the world, but are necessarily limited in their scope. The IUCN Red List, which provides information on 150,388 species worldwide, dwarfs them all.
150,388 species are on the IUCN’s Red List and counting…
Contrary to what you might expect, not all the species on the Red List of Threatened Species are actually threatened. While the Red List might be best known for charismatic rarities such as the snow leopard or Komodo
