Fundación General CSIC

Threatened Species is one of the Fundación General CSIC’s priority strategic lines. Through this line, the Foundation aims to promote and offer incentives for activities or projects aimed at preserving species of animals and plant that are endangered or seriously threatened.

The threat many species face warrants urgent measures be taken to avoid species loss and to help us better understand and characterise them. From a purely biological standpoint, the appearance and disappearance of species is a natural process driven by the basic forces of evolution: mutation, adaptation, competition for resources, selection, etc. both between individuals of different species and among individuals within a species. Nevertheless, many threatened species are in danger of extinction directly as a result of the action of human beings on their environment. In some cases, the threat arises from the limitation on the habitat available to the species, in others their indiscriminate hunting, which has led them to their being on the verge of extinction today.

The various activities the FGCSIC is running to accompany this strategic line include: the 2010 Proyectos Cero call for proposals on Threatened species, finalised in October, is funding five Proyectos Cero projects on the topic. The FGCSIC has also produced a video on threatened species and has devoted a special issue of the journal Lychnos (issue no. 3) to the subject.