Arabian oryx.
Credit: David Mallon
GENEVA: The Arabian oryx, a desert antelope that may have sparked the legend of the unicorn, has bounced back after being hunted almost to oblivion, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said.
Native to the Arabian peninsula, Oryx leucoryx has two long slender horns that in profile look as one, which may have fuelled the myth of the unicorn, the IUCN said.
Hunted to near extinction, the last Arabian oryx in the wild was shot in 1972 but after a 40-year effort in captive breeding, its population stands at 1,000 individuals, the IUCN said, trailing an update of its 'Red List' of threatened species.
"To have brought the Arabian oryx back from the brink of extinction is a major feat and a true conservation success story, one which we hope will be repeated many times over for other threatened species," said Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, head of Abu Dhabi's environment agency.
Counting the extinct species
An oryx was successfully reintroduced to the wild in Oman in 1982 and other returns have taken place in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and more recently in Jordan.
It has now qualified for a move under the Red List from 'endangered' category to 'vulnerable', the first time that a species that had been extinct in the wild has improved by three categories.
The Red List, an assessment of 59,508 plant and animal species, is a major guide to policymakers. It is the biggest biodiversity compendium available, although it still covers only a fraction of the world's vast range of species. The update says that 797 species are extinct and 64 are extinct in the wild.
Alarming new findings
Although there have been successes, there are some alarming new findings.
Of the 19 species of amphibian (frogs, toads and salamanders) that have been added to the IUCN Red List this year, eight are listed as Critically Endangered, including Atelopus patazensis, a species of harlequin toad from Peru, and Dendrotriton chujorum, a dwarf species of salamander from Guatemala.
Amphibians remain one of the most threatened species groups with an estimated 41% at risk of extinction; the main threats they face include habitat loss, pollution, disease and invasive species.
No problems with their reports
The IUCN's methodology, and that used by the 2005 U.N. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, were questioned in a study published last month.
It agreed that biodiversity was under extreme pressure but said the true rate of extinctions, if based on the criteria of habitat loss, was less than half. The IUCN's media officer, Borjana Pervan, said the agency had taken note of the study but was satisfied with its methods, including the uncertainties of calculating species threat.
"The actual number of threatened species is often uncertain because it is not known whether data-deficient species are actually threatened or not," the IUCN said.
Arabian oryx
Why doesn't this article mention the HUGE herds of Arabian oryx in Southern New Mexico USA that are destroying the local eco-system??