Biodiversity is threatened in many places in the world, but there are glimmers of light. According to a recent report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), 742 animal and plant species, which were previously unknown to science, have been discovered.
It’s everything from orchids and ants to birds, lizards and mammals. Among the animals in the report are, for example, two species of bats, a new species of narrow-nosed crocodile and an owl species.
An example is the damsel dragonfly “Umma gumma”, named after the rock band Pink Floyd’s album from 1969. There is also a moth, Clarias monsembulai, which can grow to 25 centimeters long and which can breathe on land.
WWF: “Extremely important to protect”
The report also includes a newly discovered species of coffee, Coffea rizetiana and Principedvärguv. Uven was discovered in 2022 on the island of Príncipe in Sao Tome and Principe and is characterized, among other things, by a cat-like sound.
At the same time as new species have been found in the rainforests, these are threatened due to deforestation and overexploitation of various species through, among other things, poaching. Among other things, the Central African narrow-nosed armored crocodile is threatened by poaching.
WWF believes that it is urgent to protect the biological diversity of the Congo Basin rainforests.
“It is extremely important to protect and manage these forests in a responsible way so that we can also find new species in the future,” says Olle Forshed, rainforest expert at WWF, in a press release.