Endangered species

The flora of the Mediterranean islands includes many rare and localised species unique to the islands. Some of these are particularly threatened with extinction due to various pressures caused by people and their activities in Mediterranean ecosystems. It includes 50 descriptive sheets of species which are especially threatened, based on the IUCN Red List criteria.

The 2005 version of the CITES Checklist not only provides an alphabetical list of the fauna and flora included in Appendices I, II and III of CITES as adopted by the Conference of the Parties, but includes as well a CD-ROM containing the Annotated Appendices which have an index to family names and common names.

The population of western gray whales numbers only about 100 animals and is classified on IUCN's Red List as "critically endangered".

Biodiversity within inland water ecosystems in Eastern Africa is highly diverse and of great importance to livelihoods and economies, however, development activities are not always compatible with the conservation of this diversity and it is poorly represented in the development planning process. One of the main reasons is the lack of readily available information on the status and distribution of inland water taxa.