Wednesday December 28, 2022
Sierra Sun Times —
All seven of the United States’ abalone species that live on the West Coast are listed as Critically Endangered or Endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, Red List of Threatened Species. This is the first global Red List assessment of the species. The West Coast listings were based on an abalones assessment led by Laura-Rogers Bennett of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, or CDFW, and University of California, Davis.
Six species — red, white, black, green, pink and flat abalone — are listed by IUCN as critically endangered. The northern abalone, also known as threaded or pinto abalone, is listed as endangered.
The IUCN Red List is considered the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of species. While the listing does not carry a legal requirement to aid imperiled species, it helps guide and inform global conservation and funding priorities.
“We hope this listing will highlight the dire status of these species,” said Rogers-Bennett, a senior environmental scientist with the CDFW, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center, and Bodega Marine Laboratory. “I hope this assessment will trigger a real concern and investment in these species now before the population numbers get so low that they’re really hard to bring back from the brink of extinction.”