Threatened species refers to animal and plant species under a serious, but perhaps not imminent, threat of extinction. As a conservation status, it is less serious than endangered, but of considerable importance.
As the world's rainforests and ecological systems are destroyed more and more species are being lost. Areas like the Amazon rainforest, Indonesian rainforests and many other places world-wide are experiencing real and profound problems. The result will have wide ramifications for the world as a whole.
Species which are threatened are sometimes characterised by the population dynamics measure of critical depensation, a mathematical mesaure of biomass related to population growth rate.
Although threatened and vulnerable may be used interchangeably when discussing IUCN categories, the term threatened is generally used to refer to the three categories (critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable), while vulnerable is used to refer to the least at risk of those three categories.
Threatened species are also referred to as a red-listed species, as they are listed in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
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