Giant Pandas downgraded from 'endangered' to 'vulnerable' according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Giant Pandas have been downgraded from 'endangered' to 'vulnerable' according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Key conservation and environmental successes in 2016, highlighted by WWF, include

• While Africa struggles with high levels of rhino poaching for their horns, Nepal marked two years in May since its last rhino was poached in 2014, with zero poaching helping to increase the population of one-horned rhinos to a new high of 645.
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• On August 7, Scotland produced 106 per cent of the country's electricity needs for the day, with wind turbines providing 39,545 megawatt hours (MWh) to the grid during the day while total consumption for homes, business and industry was 37,202 MWh.
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• The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said the giant panda was being downgraded from being classified as 'endangered' to the less serious category of 'vulnerable' to extinction as a result of a 17 per cent increase in population numbers, following conservation work.
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• At a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), countries agreed to end all legal trade in pangolins, traded for their meat and scales for food and medicine, to save the species from extinction.
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• The longest barrier reef in the northern hemisphere won a reprieve from seismic surveying , after officials in Belize agreed to suspend the seismic portion of offshore oil exploration, which would have taken place close to the reef World Heritage site.
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• The UK was among 24 countries and the EU that signed an agreement to protect 1.55 million square kilometres (600,000 square miles) of the Ross Sea in the Southern Ocean, Antarctica, from damaging activities such as fishing to conserve wildlife.
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• The UK ratified the world's first comprehensive treaty on climate change, the Paris Agreement, which came into force in November, and commits countries to keeping global temperature rises to 'well below' 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to curb rises to 1.5C.
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• At a conference on the illegal wildlife trade in Hanoi, Vietnam, in November, the UK pledged an additional £13 million to tackling the problem, which has helped drive a drop in global wildlife populations of 58 per cent since 1970.
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• The Spanish government announced in December it would ban dredging of the Guadalquivir River, which - if it had gone ahead - could have seen the Donana wetlands become the EU's first natural World Heritage Site to be put on the danger list