MADRID (AFP) – One in six Mediterranean mammals is threatened with extinction at the regional level, mainly due to the destruction of their habitat from urbanization, agriculture and climate change, nature body IUCN said Tuesday in a new study. Of the 320 mammal species assessed by the Geneva-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 49 were threatened, including 20 that can be found nowhere else in the world, it said in a statement. Three percent are “critically endangered”, including the Mediterranean monk seal and the Iberian lynx, another five percent are “endangered” and eight percent are “vulnerable”. “The number one threat is habitat destruction, which affects 90 percent of the threatened species,” said IUCN expert Annabelle Cuttelod, co-author of the report, in a statement released in Spain. … Large herbivores such as deer and rabbits, and carnivores, are particularly threatened. Eight species from these groups, including the common hippopotamus and the Mesopotamian fallow deer, have already gone extinct in the Mediterranean region. …
One in six Mediterranean mammals face extinction via The Oil Drum
