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The Ronquilo’s anchovy or dilis in the vernacular may be extinct soon.
29 bony fish species unique to Philippine waters have been documented, alon...
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The Ronquilo’s anchovy or dilis in the vernacular may be extinct soon.
29 bony fish species unique to Philippine waters have been documented, along with threats to their survival in “Red List Status of Marine Endemic Teleosts (Bony Fishes) of the Philippines.”
The Philippines is the world’s center of biodiversity, home to an astonishingly high marine life. The country is the second largest archipelago with 7,107 islands and islets and territorial waters covering about 1,968,700 square kilometers.
The endemic species are of national significance being only found within Philippine territory and as such within the management confines of the government. It is imperative to identify and document particular species at risk of extinction and in most need of conservation attention.
The must-have reference used the Red List Assessment Criteria and Categories of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the standard and most used measuring tool for determining whether specific species of animals and plants are endangered or not.
The Red List authors are prominent biologists, Dr. Kent E. Carpenter, Moonyeen Nida R. Alava, Mike Joshua S. Palomar, Dr. Beth Polidoro, and environmental lawyer Atty. Rodolfo Ferdinand Quicho, Jr. Atty Quicho said, “The world has changed and is changing so much due to climate change. Our biodiversity is among our most important assets to ensure our resilience amidst these changes. We must start with our endemics because they are the most significant indicators of our environmental health, thus, our capacity to adapt to climate change.”
He added that the Red List evaluates the level of threat to survival (or of extinction) of the 29 species examined. The findings indicate, among others, that most of those species found in shallow waters are already vulnerable to extinction. It is also important to note that many of the species assessed in the book were last recorded between 50 and 100 years ago, and that very little data on them are available. For practical purposes, we should consider these species as threatened because we do not know their chances of survival, much less whether they still exist.
The Red List was launched recently by First Philippine Conservation, Inc. (FPCI), and Global Marine Species Assessment for the Coral Triangle (GMSA-CT), together with GTZ, Adaptation to Climate Change & Conservation of the Biodiversity in the Philippines, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Conservation International, First Gen, and others supporters.
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