Manatee relative, 700 new species now facing extinction
By PATRICK WHITTLE
Associated Press
An international conservation organization says populations of a vulnerable species of marine mammal, numerous species of abalone and a type of Caribbean coral are now threatened with extinction. The International Union for Conservation of Nature announced the update Friday during the UN Convention on Biological Diversity conference in Montreal. The IUCN uses its Red List of Threatened Species to categorize which animals are approaching extinction. This year, the union is sounding the alarm about the dugong, which is a large and docile marine mammal that lives from the eastern coast of Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.
