Habitat degradation, climate change and illegal wildlife trafficking pose a real threat of extinction to our wildlife.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has created a European Red list of endangered species, highlighting that at least 1 677 out of 15 060 assessed European species are threatened with extinction.

Would you like to know what is being done to protect Europe's endangered species?

As part of its biodiversity strategy 2020, the European Union (EU) has introduced measures to protect endangered species, including laws on the conservation of wild bird species in the EU and on the conservation of a wide variety of animal and plant species and rare habitat types.

Moreover, in 2016, new measures were introduced to prevent wildlife trafficking and step up the fight against criminal activities linked with trafficking. To tackle the decline of wild pollinating insects, especially bees, in 2018 the EU launched the Pollinators Initiative.

A core part of the European Green Deal (a number of initiatives aimed at making Europe climate neutral in 2050), the EU's new biodiversity strategy 2030 sets EU targets for putting Europe's biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030 as well as addressing the risk of extinction for pollinators and reducing the impact of agriculture.