52 species you didn’t know of last year

With the brown-and-white panda gone and the same fate suffered by the baiji dolphin, it warmed my heart to learn that 52 new species of animals and plants have been found within 2006 on the island of Borneo, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

All 52 species, which include the less than 1cm long miniature fish Paedocypris micromegethes, have been documented in the WWF report “The Search Continues”.

The report was published in November 2006 and follows the “Borneo’s Lost World” report, which was published in April 2005. The first report revealed that 361 new species had been found on Borneo between 1994 and 2004.

I highly recommend reading both reports, which can be downloaded from the WWF’s web site.

As much as I’d like to end on a positive note, it should come as no surprise that now that us humans have found out about their existence, many of the newly discovered species are already under threat from illegal trade of wildlife and commercial deforestation.

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