This is either bad news with a silver lining or ominous good news, depending on how you look at it. After centuries of being hunted, shelled, eaten, and generally destroyed by colonial greed and industrialization, green sea turtles are finally being removed from the endangered species list. Unfortunately, some other animals are being added to it.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, the body that curates the Red List of Threatened Species, has reclassified the green sea turtle, upgrading its status from “endangered” to “least concern.”
It’s a testament to what humanity can accomplish when it cares to fix a problem. Conservationists have been fighting to protect green sea turtles since the 1950s, using a range of methods.
Green Sea Turtles Are Off the Endangered Species List
While the fight may have seemed hopeless at times, as humanity’s rapid expansion into sea turtle habitats continued to threaten their existence, the global population has rebounded by 28 percent since the 1970s. Enough to paint a rosier picture of the species’ future.
The good news is balanced out by some troubling news of new species added to the list. Overall, biodiversity is plummeting worldwide, mainly due to a combination of human-made climate change and habitat destruction.
Several regional populations are still facing tough times, especially in the East Pacific and the North Indian Ocean, where sea turtle nesting numbers are dropping, as are those in places like coaster Rica. Species affected include the hawksbill and the Kemp’s ridley.
It gets even worse when you broaden it to include animals beyond sea turtles. Nearly one in three species on earth is at risk of extinction. Birding may be exploding in popularity, but they’re disappearing so fast that there may one day soon be little to no birds to gawk at. Seals are dying off alongside the ice sheets they need to survive.
Six species were moved to the extinct category. Those include the Christmas Island shrew, a type of cone snail, the slender-billed Curlew, and the migratory shorebird.
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