The Atlantic Forest is the Brazilian biome with the largest number of endangered plant and animal species in the country. This finding is from the Ecosystem Accounts – Endangered Species in Brazil 2022 survey, released this Wednesday (24th), in Rio de Janeiro, by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The survey is based on the lists of fauna – prepared by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) – and of flora, produced by the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro (JBRJ), both released last year. According to the study, the two institutions evaluated 21,456 species of animals and plants in all the country’s biomes, that is, about 12% of all Brazilian biodiversity. From there, technicians classified the species in a situation of threat, which can be, in increasing order of concern: vulnerable (VU), endangered (EM) and critically endangered (CR). Those considered “data deficient (DD)”, “least concern (LC)” and “near threatened (NT)” are not threatened. The NT category is the last step before the species enters the VU: vulnerable classification. Evaluation The Atlantic Forest was the biome with the highest number of evaluated species: 11,811. It is also the area with the highest number of endangered species: 2,845, that is, almost a quarter (24.1%). According to the IBGE, 43% of endangered species live in the Atlantic Forest. It is also the biome with the most species declared extinct: eight, according to the IBGE, the most recent being the bell gladiator tree frog (Boana cymbalum). Leonardo Bergamini, a researcher at the IBGE, explains that “this is related to intrinsic characteristics of the biome itself, with many endemic species, species with restricted distribution, but there is also a factor that is the history of occupation of the Atlantic Forest, the biome with the greatest history of occupation and greater loss of native area. And there is a third factor: most institutions and research centers are located in this biome, so there is greater availability of information about its biodiversity, which allows a better assessment of the risk of species extinction”. Then comes the cerrado which, with 7,385 species evaluated, had 1,199 considered at risk (16.2% of the total). Other biomes with more than 10% of threatened wildlife among those evaluated species are the caatinga (3,220 or 14.9%) and the pampas (229 or 13.7%). The biomes with the lowest number of threatened species among those evaluated are the Amazon (503 or 6%) and the Pantanal (1,825 or 4.1%). Species evaluated The IBGE also reported that the total number of species evaluated in 2022 increased in relation to the list drawn up in 2014. Plants increased from 9% of the total (4,304) to 15% (7,517), while animals rose from 10% (12,009 ) to 11% (13,939). “This is good progress in the sense of having a more complete picture of the situation of the species in Brazil and, consequently, the condition of the ecosystems where they occur”, said Bergamini. Threatened species have retreated in both flora and fauna. Plant species at risk of extinction increased from 47.4% in 2014 to 42.7% in 2022. Threatened animals fell from 9.8% to 9% in the period. The drop, according to the IBGE, can be explained by the increase in the number of evaluated species. Environments With regard to environments, most of the species analyzed for both fauna and flora are from the terrestrial environment, going from 65% in 2014 to 70% in 2022. Freshwater species increased from 39% to 37% and those from marine environment, from 16% to 15%.
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