The status of mammals in Europe was assessed according to IUCN Red List Criteria and regional Red Listing guidelines. We found that nearly one in six (15%) of Europe’s 231 mammal species were threatened (IUCN categories CR, EN, VU), with a further 9% considered Near Threatened. Marine mammals faced particularly high levels of threat, with 22% of marine species (n=27) versus 14% of terrestrial species (n=204) assessed as threatened. More than a quarter (27%) of mammals had declining populations. A further 32% were stable and 8% increasing; 33% were of unknown population trend. Terrestrial mammal biodiversity was greatest in south-eastern Europe (the Balkan Peninsula, Hungary, and Romania) and in the mountainous regions of Mediterranean and temperate Europe. Habitat loss and degradation was the greatest threat to terrestrial mammals in Europe, although human disturbance, pollution, accidental mortality (e.g., secondary poisoning, vehicle collisions), overexploitation and invasive species were also important. The main threats to marine mammals were accidental mortality (e.g., fisheries bycatch), pollution and overexploitation. EU Member States have committed to halt biodiversity loss by 2010, but the evidence from this study suggests that this target is unlikely to be met and significant actions must take place to halt the decline of mammal biodiversity in Europe. The results presented here provide a baseline against which future progress can be measured
The global environment is faced with growing threats from anthropogenic disturbance, propelling the Earth into a 6th mass extinction. For the world's mammals, this is reflected in the fact that 25% of species are threatened with some risk of extinction. During this time of species loss and environmental alteration, the world's natural history museums (NHMs) are uniquely poised to provide novel insight into many aspects of conservation. This review seeks to provide evidence of the importance of NHMs to mammal conservation, how arguments against continued collecting of physical voucher specimens is counterproductive to these efforts, and to identify additional threats to collecting with a particular focus on small mammals across Africa. NHMs contribute unique data for assessing mammal species conservation status through the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened species. However, NHMs' contributions to mammal conservation go well beyond supporting the IUCN Red List, with studies addressing topics such as human impacts, climate change, genetic diversity, disease, physiology, and biodiversity education. Increasing and diverse challenges, both domestic and international, highlight the growing threats facing NHMs, especially in regards to the issue of lethally sampling individuals for the purpose of creating voucher specimens. Such arguments are counterproductive to conservation efforts and tend to reflect the moral opposition of individual researchers than a true threat to conservation. The need for continued collecting of holistic specimens of all taxa across space and time could not be more urgent, especially for underexplored biodiversity hotspots facing extreme threats such as the Afrotropics.
The scientific and political communities must be aware of our bias in the knowledge of the taxonomy of the various living organisms. Although the effects of species concepts on conservation have received considerable attention, usage of the subspecies category in conservation lists have received insufficient scientific scrutiny, at least for most taxonomic groups and geographic regions. Here we draw from the class Mammalia to show that discrepancies in the inclusion of subspecies in the IUCN Red List often reflect uneven taxonomic knowledge and the differential scientific and public interest raised by different kinds of mammals, which together can produce a biased picture of mammalian endangerment worldwide.