794 species on the brink of extinction

A study conducted by scientists working with the 52-member Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) has identified 794 species on the brink of extinction. The list includes the Bloody Bay poison frog of Trinidad and Tobago, the monkey-faced bat of Fiji, the ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States, the cloud rat of the Philippines, the Spatuletail, a hummingbird limited to one Peruvian valley and Mexico's volcano rabbit. 595 sites have been identified. Only one-third of the sites are known to have legal protection. It is worth mentioning that almost 800 species have become extinct since 1500.The study is published in the US-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org)