Switzerland has identified which animals are endangered

The main task of modern zoos is species protection, conservation of endangered species of animals. Zoos keep, breed and reintroduce species to strengthen animals in the wild. Or sometimes relocate from scratch.

When we talk about endangered animals, we use terms like endangered, endangered, or even endangered. The Zurich Zoo contains more and more species of animals that do not do well in nature. This ranges from wild rabbits that are “potentially endangered” to “endangered” giraffes and “endangered” orangutans to the second biggest tier: our black antelopes in the Lewa savannah are “extinct in the wild” . They exist only in zoos.

But where do these gradations and terms come from? And who determines which animal is classified and how? The answer comes from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), based in Gland, VD, here in Switzerland.

Of the many different functions that the IUCN performs, an important one is that it records the status of all species of fungi, plants and animals in the world and assesses whether species are endangered. To make this possible, the IUCN relies on the work of 16,000 specialists who are intimately familiar with individual groups of animals.

Experts look at each species individually and determine whether the number of animals has decreased in recent decades, and if so, by how much. This change in the number of animals is an important indicator for assessing the threat. For example, the giraffe population has declined by 40 percent from 1985 to 2015. When a population declines drastically in such a short period of time – 30 years is only three generations in a giraffe’s life – it indicates an urgent problem.

Another important category is the size of the distribution area. For example, the wild rabbit lives all over Europe. Even moving long distances from many densely populated parts of Europe has not affected this too much so far. Thus, the classification of wild rabbits is currently endangered.

However, if the species is only found in a small area or on a small island, then there is a much greater risk that hunting and/or environmental degradation will endanger the entire animal species. For example, the turquoise pygmy gecko (Cat. Critically Endangered) is found in an area of ​​just eight square kilometers, half of the city of Geneva. In such a small area, any threat can quickly lead to the extinction of the species.

The third important category is the rate of reproduction of a species. Animals that breed rapidly and breed in large numbers can recover from threats faster than species that breed at regular intervals. Example: rabbits give birth to several young five to seven times a year and thus reproduce much faster than orangutans, which have offspring only once every nine years.

Together with other categories, this forms the overall impression of each species. Depending on the severity of the threat, the IUCN classifies the animal on a scale from Least Concern to Extinct. What sounds like a lot of work is actually a lot of work. For this reason, only just under 150,000 of the approximately six million animal and plant species have been assessed to date. For the rest of the species, the status has so far been “insufficient data” or “not assessed”.

So there is still a lot to be done so that we know which animals and plants need our help the most.