India’s Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change told delegates from more than 100 countries in Jaipur that India’s Ramsar-listed wetlands have grown from 24 to 101 in a decade.
WWF India
Four of Asia’s hornbill species have a genome to call their own for the first time.
A gharial went missing in Rajasthan’s canal network in March. It took two forest departments, three sightings and five months of patient tracking to bring it home.
A camera trap at Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve has photographed the rusty-spotted cat for the first time — Asia’s smallest wild cat, confirmed in Madhya Pradesh’s newest and largest tiger reserve.
♦ Globally, nature provides services worth around US$125 trillion a year, according to WWF’s Living Planet Report.
♦ In the 20th century, freshwater fish have had the highest extinction rate worldwide among vertebrates.
♦ Nearly 200 million people depend on coral reefs for protection against storm surge and waves.
♦ Rainforests are shrinking: almost 20% of the Amazon has disappeared in just 50 years.
♦ In the last 50 years, global average temperature has risen at 170 times the background rate.
♦ At least 70% of new small molecule drugs introduced over the past 25 years have come from a natural source.
♦ Almost 6 billion tonnes of fish and other seafood have been taken from the world’s oceans since 1950.
♦ Today, 90% of the world’s seabirds are estimated to have fragments of plastic in their stomach.
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