Biodiversity conservation in Vietnam is facing with difficulties when the number of threatened species is increasing and their living environment worsening, according to Vietnam's latest National Environment Report 2010 released by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE) Wednesday.

The report said in the 2007 national Red Data Book, 418 species of animals and 464 species of plants were categorized as threatened.

But the status has changed over the years, from vulnerable to endangered, then extinct, MNRE said.

Over the last decade or so, at least ten species (including one flora and nine fauna) have vanished in Vietnam. The number of globally threatened species of animals that were classified as endangered in Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) increased to 47 species in 2010 from 46 in 2004 and 25 in 1996, the report said.

Insider experts said that natural habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive alien species, pollution, forest fires and climate change are major threats to threatened species. In addition, poor state management of biodiversity is also a great pressure on them.

The large number of globally threatened species in Vietnam put the country in the top 15 countries worldwide with declining mammal species, top 20 for birds, and top 30 for plants and amphibians, the report said.