clipped from: www.scientificamerican.com   

Forget about climate change for a moment, the biggest threats to the world’s imperiled species are deforestation, pollution, poaching and invasive species.

Those are the findings of an analysis by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Published every four years, the report examines the state of globally threatened species.

Habitat loss and pollution pose the greatest extinction risk for currently threatened amphibians, while the deadly chytrid fungus remains a lesser but still potent threat. As for threatened mammals, habitat loss and poaching may be the biggest factors wiping them off the map.


Habitat loss is still the main driver whose results we are seeing,” says Cagan Sekercioglu, a Stanford ornithologist who contributed data to the new report, “Climate change is building momentum . . . so it’s going to have worse and worse impacts.”