A Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) pictured in its enclosure at Faunia zoo park. | Photo by Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images
More than one in five of the world’s reptile species are threatened with extinction, researchers have determined in a new paper that marks the culmination of more than 20 years of slow-going research. On top of facing human-caused threats to their survival, the scaled creatures have fallen victim to bias in conservation priorities.
Conservationists with limited resources have had to play catch-up in their efforts to assess threats to turtles, crocodiles, lizards, snakes, and tuatara (the last in an ancient lineage of reptiles that roamed the Earth with dinosaurs). Similar comprehensive assessments for birds, mammals, and amphibians (all categorized as tetrapods, or four-limbed vertebrates) were completed over a decade ago.
Why has there…
