Leaders scramble to halt extinctions as deadline looms

摘要

An international biodiversity convention closes today with conservationists pressing governments to hurry and meet their self-imposed species protection goals ahead of the next gathering in two years.December marks the 25th anniversary of the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity, one of the signature outcomes from the famous 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. A follow-up gathering held in Nagoya, Japan, in 2008 saw governments pledging to dramatically expand the range of protected land and marine habitat in an effort to halt animal population loss and extinctions.