NatureServe

Narrative success stories about your organization and what you accomplished. This can include the people associated with or impacted by the organization. Please limit your stories to 300 words each. If you have this information already available online or in document format, please upload or link those below.After 15 years of research, one year of data analysis, and one year in review, the results of the Global Reptile Assessment were published in the journal Nature in April 2022. The assessment, led by NatureServe, found that at least 21% of all reptile species globally are threatened with extinction.
The research revealed that efforts to conserve threatened mammals, birds, and amphibians are more likely than expected to co-benefit many threatened reptiles. Although reptiles are well known to inhabit arid habitats such as deserts and scrubland, most reptile species occur in forested habitats, where they –and other vertebrate groups – suffer from threats such as logging and conversion of forest to agriculture. The study found that 30% of forest-dwelling reptiles are at risk of extinction, compared with 14% of reptiles in arid habitats.
The study also highlighted what we stand to lose if we fail to protect reptiles. If each of the 1,829 threatened reptiles became extinct, we would lose a combined 15.6 billion years of evolutionary history—including countless adaptations for living in diverse environments.