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Monarch butterfly on a wildflower
Photo: Susan Gary/Getty Images
The bright orange monarch butterfly is known for its spectacular migrations of up to 4000 kilometers in America - the butterfly is now listed as critically endangered and therefore threatened with extinction on the Red List of Threatened Species.
This was announced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN.
The causes are the destruction of its habitat and climate change.
"Today's update of the Red List highlights the fragility of nature's wonders," said IUCN Director-General Bruno Oberle.
The environmental organization WWF complains that the Red List is getting longer and longer.
More than 28 percent of the 147,000 recorded species, more than ever before, are now considered threatened.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature is thus drawing a "dark picture of the situation of flora and fauna," it says.
Among other things, extreme temperatures tempted the moths to fly early to their summer regions, when the milkweed they feed on has not yet emerged, writes the IUCN.
Drought also decimates the stocks of milkweed.
The winter habitats of butterflies in Mexico and California have also shrunk due to deforestation.
In the summer climes in Canada and other US states, weed killers and pesticides attacked them.
The number of migratory monarch butterflies has fallen by up to 72 percent in ten years.
The smaller western population consisted of an estimated ten million butterflies in the 1980s, and in 2021 there were still almost 2,000 butterflies.
The larger eastern population shrank by 84 percent between 1996 and 2004 alone.
It's not too late to save the butterflies from extinction.
Fewer pesticides and more milkweed could help survive.
Tigers are also still critically endangered, according to the IUCN.
According to the information, there are between 3,726 and 5,578 tigers in the wild, which is more than previously thought.
The new estimate, which is 40 percent higher than the last evaluation in 2015, is based on improved monitoring of the population.
Tigers are primarily threatened by poaching, the loss of their habitat and dwindling numbers of their prey.
»We humans can only live healthy and safe if this tower of life stands still«
The Red List includes only the migratory subspecies Danaus plexippus plexippus, which flies north from Mexico and California to Canada.
There are also lesser-known subspecies that do not migrate and sometimes live in other areas.
The WWF points out that people can only survive if nature is intact.
"You have to imagine this system as a tower made of building blocks - each stone is an animal or plant species," said the WWF species protection expert Anne Hanschke.
»Only when this tower of life stands can we humans live healthy and safe.
But the more stones are knocked out of the tower, i.e. the more species become extinct, the more unstable it becomes.« The Red List shows how much this tower is shaking.
The Red List of Threatened Species, which has been kept since 1964, now includes more than 147,000 animal and plant species, of which more than 41,000 are threatened with extinction.
The IUCN classifies studied species into eight categories, ranging from "data insufficient" to "extinct".
"Endangered" is level 5.
joe/dpa/AFP
