Amidst the greatest mass extinction of species since the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago, there is one smallish success

Channel island fox. (Photo: George HH Huey)

The Island Fox which had vanished from all but six of the California Channel Islands off the coast of southern California, USA on which it lives, has staged a remarkable comeback. By the mid-1990s four of the fox subspecies were listed as Endangered under the U.S Endangered Species Act. Aggressive recovery actions such as captive breeding and reintroduction, vaccination against canine diseases, and relocating Golden eagles which prey on the fox, have brought all four subspecies back to pre-decline population levels with annual survival rates above 85%.

 

The latest update to the IUCN red list added more than 1,000 species, to bring total assessments to 71,500 species, including all mammals, birds and amphibians. More than a third of the species are considered under threat. About half of known reptiles have been assessed and a third of fish, but only a fraction of invertebrates, plants and fungi.

source: Damian Carrington.