"Thirty-one species of plants and animals were officially declared extinct in a report from an international conservation body published Thursday, which detailed the continued challenges and successes faced by conservationists around the world.
The report, published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), also indicated that more than 35,000 species of organisms on Earth are now threatened with extinction, including for the first time ever the entirety of the various global populations of freshwater dolphins.
In another shocking regional example documented in the report, experts declared nearly every species of freshwater fish native to the Philippines's Lake Lanao, pictured above, are extinct as a result of overfishing and habitat destruction brought on by invasive species; the remaining two species of native fish are considered "possibly extinct" due to their extremely low populations."
