An update of the ‘Red List of Threatened Species’ was released Saturday morning.

Of the 138,374 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for its survival watchlist more than 38,000 are now at risk of extinction, as the destructive impact of human activity on our planet deepens.

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed.

In 2019 the UN’s biodiversity experts warned that more than a million species are on the brink of extinction — raising the specter that the planet is on the verge of its sixth mass extinction event in 500 million years.

“The red list status shows that we’re on the cusp of the sixth extinction event,” the IUCN’s Head of Red List Unit Craig Hilton-Taylor told Agence France Presse on the eve of the congress.

“If the trends carry on going upward at that rate, we’ll be facing a major crisis soon.”

On Thursday, a group of human rights NGOs, including Survival International, Attac and Minority Rights Group, held a counter-summit presenting their alternative vision.

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