Lake Turkana fish could be extinct, IUCN study shows

A woman quenches her thirst along the shores of Lake Turkana. [File, Standard]

The IUCN Red List now includes 157,190 species, of which 44,016 are threatened with extinction.

"Climate change is menacing the diversity of life our planet harbours, and undermining nature's capacity to meet basic human needs," said Dr Grethel Aguilar, IUCN Director General.

He said the IUCN Red List update highlights the strong links between the climate and biodiversity crises, which must be tackled jointly.

"Species declines are an example of the havoc being wreaked by climate change, which we have the power to stop with urgent, ambitious action to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius," Aguilar added.

The report also shows the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) has moved from least concern to near threatened, with new evidence showing the global population decreased by 23 percent between 2006 and 2020. Atlantic salmon are now restricted to a small portion of the rivers they inhabited a century ago across northern Europe and North America, due to multiple threats over the course of their long-distance migrations between freshwater and marine habitats.

Big leaf mahogany, one of the world's most commercially sought-after timber trees, has moved from Vulnerable to Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

The report revealed that numbers across Central and South America have reduced by at least 60 per cent over the past 180 years, due to unsustainable harvest.