Top 10 facts about wildlife
Today is World Wildlife Day, celebrated every year on March 3 as proclaimed by the United Nations in 2013.
1. This year’s theme is Listen To The Young Voices, urging us all to listen to young people’s views and ideas on conserving wildlife.
2. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed 2,599 species, subspecies and sub-populations of critically endangered animals.
3. There are also 1,975 critically endangered plants, fungi and other organisms.
4. Most endangered of all may be the ivory-billed woodpecker, last reported to have been seen in 2014 in Arkansas and Florida.
5. Colonies of wild scorpions have been sighted in Britain, mainly near ports in Kent.
6. The Hawaiian crow was declared extinct in the wild in 2002, but a plan to repopulate the area was begun last year with birds bred in captivity.
7. According to a contentious World Wildlife Fund report last year, global wildlife populations have declined by 58 per cent in the last 40 years.
8. Martha, the world’s last passenger pigeon, died in Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.
9. About ten people a year are killed by sharks but about 100 million sharks are killed by people.
10. The most common wild mammals in Britain are rats, mice, voles and humans, in that order.