Human gluttony increases the endangered species until the 22,400

Imagine that an animal begins to devour one by one to the 7,200 billion humans who inhabit the planet and around the year 2050 there are only 720,000 people on the Earth. The predator would have annihilated the whole of humanity except a population the size of Seville. And that is what happened to the puffer fish of China, an animal endowed with, after millions of years of evolution, venom and the capacity to swell to scare their enemies, but that has not been able to beat a new danger: the fashion of the sashimi. Overfishing for supply to the Japanese market has decreased its population 99.99 % in the past 40 years, according to the latest edition of the Red List of Threatened Species, presented today.

Human gluttony has also led to the blue fin tuna of the Pacific, ingredient of the sushi and sashimi, to go to the category of "vulnerable to extinction". The fishing industry, especially the asian, to catch these fish when they are young, before they are played, and the IUCN estimates that the population may have been cut 33% in the last two decades. The farming industry of eels in Asia, which is now supplied by american eels after exhausting the japanese, has also forced to classify the species as threatened.

Smart has demanded that imposed strict limits on the catch of these and other species and has asked to be put into action as soon as possible measures to protect their habitats. Half of the 2,000 species whose status has been evaluated for the first time in the Red List is theoretically protected areas. "Only 25% of the protected areas are managed well and that is a very serious problem," recalled Smart.

The cobra China is a good example of the failure in the conservation of some natural sanctuaries. Living in the Chinese reserves of Ailaoshan and Dawesihan, in addition to the Kenting National Park in Taiwan, but its population has fallen in the last 20 years due to the hunting to supply copies to the kitchens of Hong Kong, where it is considered as a delicatessen.

The president of the species survival Commission of IUCN, Simon Stuart has called for "a multiplication of efforts of conservation". The expert has reminded us that, when there are resources and political will, get reverse the critical state of the species, as has happened with the Golden Frog Natural Reserve, in the Colombian department of Tolima. This protected area was created in 2008 for armoring a fragment of humid forest in which they live two species of poisonous frogs discovered in the last decade. Its state is recovering.