The Slow Loss by Michela Lazzaroni

Over the past 10 years, more than 160 species of animals have become extinct. It is a slow and steady loss, but the extinction rate is increasing every year, and is bound to grow even further.
It’s not something we easily notice in our everyday life, but endangered species are closer to us than we would expect; this also applies to my country, Italy. It is necessary to collect data and keep track not only of the species that are currently threatened and which we will soon lose if we do not intervene immediately, but also of the species that have already been lost, to remember the responsibility we, as humans, have.
In 1964 the IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, established the "Red List", which collects information on the conservation of terrestrial animal and plant species, in order to obtain a health map of our planet’s biodiversity. Each species is ranked according to its degree of danger: vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, and extinct. There are currently more than 147,500 species on the list, 41,000 of which are threatened with extinction.
This diptych shows the species of endangered birds (on the left) and fishes (on the right) in Italy, according to the IUCN's "Red list". For each animal, the following are indicated: common name, order, degree of danger, size and habitat.