Earth Protect Blog

by Lucía Rodríguez on February 19, 2017

Primates are facing extinction.

63% of the world’s primate species are currently threatened with extinction based on a study published in Science Advances, led by Alejandro Estrada and Paul Garber and co-authoring, one of the founders of the Lemur Conservation Network, Conservation International Executive Vice Chair and Chair of the *IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group, Russ Mittemeier and Senior Research Scientist of Conservation International and Deputy-Chair of the *IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group, Anthony Rylands.

The IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group was created in the early 1960’s to establish a global network of primate conservationists.

Primates, which are the third most diverse order of mammals, are under the highest level of threat of any larger group of mammals and among the highest of any group of vertebrates.

All of this means that primates are identified into one of the three IUCN categories of threat, Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable. This can be interpreted as 43% of all primates (298 species), that are Critically Endangered and Endangered, which signals a very big red flag.

The region where this issue is most extreme is the island of Madagascar.