Over 700 freshwater fish species in North America, nearly 40 percent of the total, are considered vulnerable to extinction or worse, according to a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey. The study, published in the journal Fisheries, is the most comprehensive assessment of North American freshwater fish species since 1989, but the results show little reason for celebration. Of the assessed species, only 11 percent were better off than in 1989, while the list of imperiled species nearly doubled since then and suspected extinctions grew by over 50 percent to a total of 61. Researchers said that pollution, drought, invasive species, the effects of development, and demand for water all contributed to the decline and that climate change may have also played a role. "Fish are indicators of how good the water quality is," said Howard Jelks of the USGS. "As long as you're losing fish, you're also likely losing crayfish, mussels, and other things of that nature. They're kind of the canary in the coal mine."
source: ScienceDaily, Miami Herald
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REwonk Posted 4:47 am
10 Sep 2008
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guade00 Posted 5:22 am
10 Sep 2008
Rhetorically speaking, aren't all species on Earth--save for, maybe, cockroaches and water bears--vulnerable to extinction?
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Pathos Posted 4:47 pm
10 Sep 2008
(Yeah, I've totally used that joke before. Just you try thinking of never-before-seen "stylistic error" puns...)
Anyway, the sentence really should just read, "Vulnerable or worse". (I opted for capitalizing "vulnerable," but italicizing it or throwing quotes around it would work just as well.) If they just wanted to be excruciatingly clear, they could say "Vulnerable (to extinction) or worse".
"Vulnerable" in this case is a technical term. The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN)--usually considered the authority on what is and isn't about to be utterly eradicated with no chance of miraculous recovery ever--defines "Vulnerable" as the least-threatened subcategory of the list of species they deem Threatened. Before Vulnerable (so, on the "not Threatened" side of things) comes Near Threatened, which is itself preceded by Least Concern--meaning, not endangered, or at least, no more endangered than every other form of life on this planet. Within the Threatened group, after Vulnerable comes Endangered, then Critically Endangered.
Beyond the three Threatened designations, there is Exinct in the Wild, and finally, simply Extinct.
As to what these designations mean in terms of living or dead critters... You'll have to ask the IUCN. Or read Wikipedia.
So, in a nutshell, without reading the actual articles for specifics: We've got just under 280 endangered species of freshwater fish in North America--which almost certainly includes a few that are actually extinct--and also apparently a bit over 420 that aren't endangered... Yet.
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