Lion among 23,000 species threatened with extinction!!!

The mighty lion, reclusive cave crabs and the world’s rarest sea lion are among nearly 23,000 species at risk of dying out. In an update to its “Red List” of threatened species, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) hailed some clear advances in saving endangered species such as the Iberian lynx.
But, it warned, those successes have been overshadowed by declines in a range of species, with 22,784 animals and plants threatened with extinction.

Following six decades of decline, the population of the Iberian lynx, considered the world’s most endangered feline, has seen its numbers swell from only 52 adult cats in 2002 to 156 a decade later, IUCN said.
The species has seen its population balloon from 200-500 individuals in the 1950s to around 20,000 in 2010.The lion remains listed as vulnerable at a global level, with its western African subpopulation listed as “critically endangered” due to over-hunting and dwindling prey.

Rapid decline has also been recorded in eastern Africa, which historically has been a stronghold for lions, IUCN said, warning that trade in bones and other body parts for traditional medicine in Africa and in Asia was a new and emerging threat to the species.

And it pointed to the New Zealand sea lion – one of the rarest sea lion species in the world – which now is listed as “endangered”, due mainly to disease and changes to its habitat caused by fishing.

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IUCN also warned that two species of crab, Karstama balicum and Karstama emdi, found only in a single cave on the island of Bali, are now considered “critically endangered”, as they have been increasingly threatened by growing tourism and numerous religious ceremonies held in the cave.