Information for my leaflet.

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Since 1800, England has lost about 500 different species. Let’s not lose any more.

It’s not just exotic species in Africa or Asia that are threatened with extinction. In 2010 – International Year of Biodiversity – a report by Natural England revealed that England has lost a huge number of native species in the last 200 years.  These include around 12% of our land mammals and almost a quarter of our native butterflies.

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The conservation status of a species indicates the likelihood that it will become extinct. Many factors are considered when assessing the conservation status of a species; e.g., such statistics as the number remaining, the overall increase or decrease in the population over time, breeding success rates, or known threats. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the best-known worldwide conservation status listing and ranking system.

Over 40% of species are estimated to be at risk extinction. Internationally, 199 countries have signed an accord to create Biodiversity Action Plans that will protect endangered and other threatened species. In the United States this plan is usually called a species Recovery Plan.

How can we fix this?

Captive Breeding:

Captive breeding is the process of breeding rare or endangered species in human controlled environments with restricted settings, such as wildlife preserves, zoos and other conservation facilities. Captive breeding is meant to save species from extinction and so stabilise the population of the species that it will not disappear.

This technique has worked for many species for some time, with probably the oldest known such instances of captive mating being attributed to menageries of European and Asian rulers, an example being the Père David's deer. However, captive breeding techniques are usually difficult to implement for such highly mobile species as some migratory birds (e.g. cranes) and fishes (e.g.hilsa). Additionally, if the captive breeding population is too small, then inbreeding may occur due to a reduced gene pool and reduce immunity.

Private farming:

Whereas poaching substantially reduces endangered animal populations, legal, for-profit, private farming does the opposite. It has substantially increased the populations of the southern black rhinoceros and southern white rhinoceros. Dr Richard Emslie, a scientific officer at the IUCN, said of such programs, "Effective law enforcement has become much easier now that the animals are largely privately owned... We have been able to bring local communities into the conservation programmes. There are increasingly strong economic incentives attached to looking after rhinos rather than simply poaching: from eco-tourism or selling them on for a profit. So many owners are keeping them secure. The private sector has been key to helping our work."

Conservation experts view the effect of China's turtle farming on the wild turtle populations of China and South-Eastern Asia—many of which are endangered—as "poorly understood". Although they commend the gradual replacement of wild-caught turtles with farm-raised turtles in the marketplace (the percentage of farm-raised individuals in the "visible" trade grew from around 30% in 2000 to around 70% in 2007), they worry that many wild animals are caught to provide farmers with breeding stock. The conservation expert Peter Paul van Dijk noted that turtle farmers often believe that wild-caught animals are superior breeding stock; turtle farmers may therefore seek and catch the very last remaining wild specimens of some endangered turtle species.

In 2009, researchers in Australia first coaxed southern bluefin tuna to breed in landlocked tanks, enabling fish farming to save the species from overfishing.


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Animals going extinct in UK:
Horses (Exmoor)
Hummingbirds
Peacocks
Ground squirrel
Wolf spider
Mice
Crayfish
Deer
 Red-necked phalarope

 Black-tailed godwit

 Scottish wildcat

 Capercaillie

 Cuckoo

 Red squirrel

 Turtle dove

 Natterjack toad

 Brown hare

 Hedgehog

(Also add map of where conservation is taking place)