97 Fun Facts About Endangered Species

Which organization maintains the Red List of Threatened Species?

IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, was so short of funds in 1961 that WWF was set up largely to raise money for its work.

Which Red List category, abbreviated LC, is used for species that are widespread and abundant?

Least Concern can only be awarded after a formal assessment, so a species too little studied to judge is filed as Data Deficient instead, however common it may be.

Which US president signed the Endangered Species Act into law in 1973?

Richard Nixon had declared existing protections inadequate in 1972; signing the tougher law, he called threatened wildlife an irreplaceable part of the national heritage.

Which 1973 treaty regulates international trade in endangered animals and plants?

CITES was signed in Washington in 1973 and now has more than 180 member countries; in 1989 it gave African elephants its strictest protection, shutting down the legal international ivory trade.

Which animal appears on the logo of the World Wide Fund for Nature?

The giant panda logo was inspired by Chi Chi, the star attraction at London Zoo when the fund was launched in 1961; naturalist Sir Peter Scott drew the first version.

In 2016 the WWF's mascot species was moved from Endangered to which Red List category?

Vulnerable replaced Endangered after China's fourth national survey counted 1,864 of the animals in the wild, a rise taken as proof that decades of habitat protection were working.

Which pesticide thinned eggshells and drove bald eagles toward extinction in the mid-20th century?

DDT built up in the fish and birds that raptors ate until their eggshells grew so thin they cracked before hatching; the US cancelled most uses in 1972.

In which US state were bald eagles never listed as endangered, even as they nearly vanished elsewhere?

Alaska's eagles stayed off the list although the territory had paid bounties on more than 100,000 of them between 1917 and 1953; in the lower 48 the bird stayed listed until 2007.

Which bird became extinct in the wild in 1987, when the last free-flying individuals were captured for a breeding program?

The California condor now flies again in California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California, but lead fragments in the carcasses it scavenges remain its leading cause of death.

Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in 1914 at which zoo?

Cincinnati Zoo's Martha was the last of a species once counted in billions; the telegraph and railroads let commercial hunters track the flocks and ship birds to city markets by the barrel.

The vaquita, a small porpoise on the brink of extinction, lives only in which body of water?

The Gulf of California's northern end is the vaquita's entire range; fewer than 20 survive, because they drown in gillnets set illegally for other catch.

Illegal fishing for which large fish, prized for its swim bladder, is the main cause of vaquita deaths?

Totoaba swim bladders are smuggled to China, where they fetch high prices for soup; the fish is about the size of a vaquita, so nets set for it are the deadliest.

One rhino species survives only as a single wild population in Ujung Kulon National Park, on which Indonesian island?

Java's western tip shelters the last few dozen Javan rhinos; the species once ranged across Southeast Asia, but its only other surviving population, on the mainland, died out around 2010.

After the last male northern white rhino died in 2018, the two surviving females lived under armed guard in which country?

Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy took in Najin and her daughter Fatu from a Czech zoo in 2009, in the hope that a return to African grassland would encourage them to breed.

Which is the smallest and hairiest of the five living rhino species?

The Sumatran rhino is also Asia's only two-horned rhino; since Malaysia's last ones died in 2019, it survives only in Indonesia.

The Amur leopard, one of the rarest big cats, is native to which region?

Southeastern Russia and northern China held fewer than 30 of these leopards in 2007; since Russia created a national park for them in 2012, the count has passed 100.

Mountain gorillas survive in two populations: the Virunga Mountains and which Ugandan national park?

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park holds about half of all mountain gorillas; after decades of close protection the subspecies passed 1,000 animals and left the Critically Endangered list in 2018.

Which great ape survives as only 250 to 300 animals in the hills along the Cameroon-Nigeria border?

The Cross River gorilla has been seen throwing sticks and clumps of grass when threatened by people, a rare act of defiance in gorillas, which usually flee from humans.

Which New Zealand bird is the world's only flightless parrot and also the heaviest parrot of all?

The kakapo was nearly wiped out by the cats, rats and stoats that settlers introduced, so every known bird now lives on a predator-free island or sanctuary, each one named and tagged.

Which prairie predator, believed extinct by 1979, was rediscovered near Meeteetse, Wyoming, in 1981?

The black-footed ferret relies on prairie dogs for about 90 percent of its diet, so it crashed when prairie dog towns were destroyed; the Wyoming survivors were caught by 1987 to found a breeding program.

Lonesome George, who died in 2012, was the last of which kind of animal?

The Pinta Island tortoise was thought extinct until a snail researcher spotted George in 1971; despite decades in a breeding centre with related females, he left no offspring.

Which antelope, hunted to extinction in the wild by the early 1970s, was later restored from zoo-bred herds?

The Arabian oryx was saved by a rescue mission: in 1962 a few of the last wild animals were caught and sent to an American zoo, and herds bred from them were released in Oman from 1982.

Przewalski's horse has been reintroduced to Hustai National Park in which country?

Mongolia saw its last wild takhi in the 1960s; every Przewalski's horse alive descends from fewer than 15 wild-caught animals bred in zoos, and zoo-bred herds began returning in the 1990s.

What has devastated Tasmanian devil numbers since the late 1990s?

A contagious facial tumour disease spreads when devils bite one another, one of the very few cancers that can pass between animals; it now threatens the species' survival.

The saola, nicknamed the "Asian unicorn", was unknown to science until 1992, when its horns were found in which country?

Vietnam's Vu Quang reserve gave up the first clue, a pair of strange long horns in a hunter's house; the few saolas ever caught died within months, so no zoo holds one.

Which wolf, declared extinct in the wild in 1980, was released in North Carolina in 1987?

The red wolf's last wild animals, on the Texas-Louisiana coast, were deliberately captured in the 1970s to start a breeding program; their descendants in North Carolina are the only ones now living wild.

The Florida panther is the only confirmed population of which wild cat in the eastern United States?

Cougar numbers in Florida had sunk to 20 or 30 by 1995, when eight females were brought from Texas and released to counter inbreeding.

Which falcon, gone from the eastern United States by the 1960s, left the endangered list in 1999?

Peregrine falcons were restored by releasing thousands of captive-bred young; they have since taken to city life, nesting on the ledges of tall buildings and hunting pigeons.

Which marine mammal, hunted almost to extinction for its fur before a 1911 treaty, keeps kelp forests healthy by eating sea urchins?

The sea otter has the densest fur of any animal, which is what made its pelt so prized; without otters, sea urchins multiply and graze kelp forests bare.

Which fish-eating crocodilian of South Asian rivers has a long, thin snout ending in a pot-shaped bump on adult males?

The gharial is thought to be named after that bump, the ghara, which resembles an earthen pot of the same name; males use it to produce a loud buzzing sound.

Which raptor, once known as the monkey-eating bird of prey, is a national bird and among the world's rarest eagles?

The Philippine eagle was renamed by presidential proclamation in 1978 because the old name was a misnomer: it also hunts flying lemurs, large snakes and hornbills.

The Iberian lynx fell below 100 animals after two viruses devastated which animal, its main prey?

The European rabbit was hit first by myxomatosis and later by a haemorrhagic virus, leaving the lynx short of food; boosting rabbit numbers and releasing captive-bred cats lifted the total past 2,000 by 2024.

Which scaly animal is the most trafficked mammal in the world?

Pangolins roll into a tight ball when threatened, shielded by overlapping scales of keratin, the protein in fingernails; those scales are what traffickers sell for traditional medicine.

Hawaii has only two endemic mammals: the monk seal and which other animal?

A hoary bat, the ope'ape'a, is Hawaii's only surviving native land mammal; its ancestors flew in across the open Pacific from North America.

The Wollemi pine, discovered in 1994, grows wild in the Blue Mountains of which Australian state?

New South Wales sent specialist firefighters to the grove's secret location during the 2019-20 bushfires; they set up irrigation and dropped retardant, and the trees survived.

Which fish, believed extinct for 66 million years, turned up alive off South Africa in 1938?

The coelacanth was spotted in a trawler's catch by museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, who hauled the fish away in a taxi and had it mounted so that an expert could identify it.

Wild axolotls survive only in the canals of Xochimilco, on the southern edge of which city?

Mexico City spread over the lakes where axolotls once lived, leaving only remnant canals; labs worldwide breed them to study how they regrow lost limbs.

As of its 2022 census, which country held more than half of the world's wild tigers?

India counted 3,682 tigers in 2022, well over half of a world total put at up to 5,600; the reserves set up under Project Tiger since 1973 are credited with the recovery.

Blue whales, protected from commercial hunting since 1966, feed almost entirely on which prey?

Krill are tiny shrimp-like animals, yet they sustain the largest animal ever known; whalers had hunted blue whales almost to extinction before the ban.

Which reptile, hunted close to extinction for its hide, was declared recovered in 1987?

The American alligator rebounded once hunting was outlawed and the hide trade controlled; it keeps federal protection mainly because it looks so much like the rarer American crocodile.

The baiji, possibly the first dolphin driven extinct by humans, lived in which river?

The Yangtze was searched for six weeks in 2006 by an international team that found no baiji at all, and the dolphin was declared functionally extinct.

In September 2021, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed declaring which large bird extinct?

The ivory-billed woodpecker was last seen for certain in Louisiana in 1944, yet when the agency finalised its extinction list in 2023 it held the bird back to keep reviewing disputed newer sightings.

The Devils Hole pupfish lives in one cavern, part of Death Valley National Park, in which state?

Nevada's Devils Hole reached the Supreme Court in 1976, when Cappaert v. United States limited a ranch's groundwater pumping so the shallow rock shelf the pupfish depend on stayed under water.

The golden lion tamarin is endemic to the Atlantic coastal forests of which country?

Brazil's golden lion tamarins had dwindled to a few hundred by the 1970s; zoo-born monkeys were then released into the forest, helping the wild population climb to several thousand.

Kemp's ridley, the smallest sea turtle, lays about 95 percent of its nests in which Mexican Gulf state?

A Tamaulipas beach once drew tens of thousands of nesting females in a single day, filmed in 1947; by 1985 fewer than 300 females nested in a whole season.

Which sea turtle was pushed to the brink largely because its shell was the source of tortoiseshell?

Hawksbill shell, mottled amber and brown, was carved into combs, jewellery and trinkets for centuries; hunting for it nearly wiped the turtle out before the international trade was outlawed.

Which marine biologist wrote Silent Spring, the 1962 book that turned public opinion against pesticides?

Rachel Carson had spent years as a US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and editor; chemical companies fought her book fiercely, yet it led to a reversal in national pesticide policy.

A single fish of which overfished species sold for about $3.1 million at a Tokyo New Year auction in 2019?

Bluefin tuna is so prized for sushi that this one fish drew a then-record bid of 333.6 million yen. New Year auction prices run far above market value because the winner is buying publicity.

Conservationists taught captive-raised whooping cranes a migration route to Florida by training them to follow what?

Ultralight aircraft led each year's chicks from Wisconsin to wintering grounds in Florida, a method first worked out with Canada geese. A chick hatched in the wild in 2006 followed its parents south instead.

Wartime ivory poaching left more and more female elephants born tuskless in Gorongosa National Park in which country?

Mozambique fought a long civil war in which tusked elephants were shot for ivory, so tuskless females survived and passed the trait to their daughters. It is evolution driven by poaching, seen within decades.

Poachers kill rhinos for horns made of which protein, the same material as human fingernails?

Keratin is all a rhino horn is, the same stuff as hair and nails, and there is no good evidence that it has any health benefit. Belief that it does still drives the killing.

The dodo, wiped out within a century of Dutch sailors first recording it in 1598, lived only on which island?

Mauritius had no mammal predators, so the dodo probably nested on the ground and was entirely fearless of humans. The last widely accepted sighting came in 1662.

Which animated film follows Blu, a tame macaw whose species was later declared extinct in the wild?

Rio put the Spix's macaw on screen eight years before the species was officially declared extinct in the wild. Captive-bred birds were released back into their old range in 2022.

Gray wolves were released in 1995 into which US national park, where rangers had killed the last ones in 1926?

Yellowstone was overrun by elk once its wolves were gone, and aspen and cottonwood were grazed down. Rangers spent more than 30 years trapping and shooting elk before the predators came back.

Which North American grazer fell from about 60 million animals to just 541 by 1889 before herds were rebuilt?

Bison were wiped out partly to deprive Plains nations of the animal that fed, clothed and sheltered them. In 2016 the species was named the national mammal of the United States.

Scientists warn that human activity is driving a mass extinction that would be which one in Earth's history?

The sixth is the usual label, because five earlier mass extinctions, the Big Five, show in the fossil record. Some researchers say the losses so far are dramatic and serious but not yet on that scale.

In sea turtles, the temperature of the sand around a nest decides what about the hatchlings inside?

Their sex depends on the heat of the sand: warm nests produce females and cool ones males. Rising beach temperatures raise the fear of generations with too few males.

Lemurs, most of whose roughly 100 kinds are threatened or endangered, live in the wild only on which island?

Madagascar's lemurs are threatened by deforestation, hunting for bushmeat and capture for the pet trade. Their long isolation there produced a variety to rival any other primate group.

Clearing rainforest for plantations of which crop is a leading cause of habitat loss for Borneo's orangutans?

Palm oil plantations and logging have eaten into the lowland forest the apes depend on. Orangutans that raid crops are also killed in retaliation.

Which American primatologist was murdered in her cabin in Rwanda in 1985 after years defending mountain gorillas?

Dian Fossey was buried beside the gorilla Digit in the graveyard she had built at her Karisoke camp. Her book Gorillas in the Mist had appeared two years before her death.

Humans' two closest living relatives are the chimpanzee and which other endangered ape?

The bonobo is listed as endangered, with commercial poaching by far its most prominent threat. Its name is thought to come from a misspelling on a shipping crate from the town of Bolobo.

Which Arctic animal was listed as threatened under US law in 2008 as the sea ice it depends on melts away?

The polar bear hunts where sea ice meets open water, waiting for the seals that make up most of its diet. A 2008 study predicted that two-thirds of the animals could be gone by 2050.

Which marsupial was officially listed as endangered in Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory in February 2022?

Koala habitat has been lost to farming, towns, drought and wildfire. The animals are nonetheless over-abundant in parts of South Australia and Victoria, where numbers are growing unsustainably.

Which whale's eerie songs, released on a 1970 album, helped launch the worldwide Save the Whales movement?

Humpback males sing complex songs that can last half an hour. Recordings by the biologist Roger Payne were later pressed for 10.5 million magazine subscribers, the largest single pressing in recording history.

Which US president created the first national wildlife refuge, Florida's Pelican Island, by executive order in 1903?

Theodore Roosevelt acted after two bird protectors visited his New York home to plead for the island. He went on to establish the first 51 federal bird reserves.

Which biblical name do biologists give to a species that turns up alive after being written off as extinct?

Lazarus species take their label from the man raised from the dead in the Gospel of John. Fossil hunters use it too, for groups that vanish from the rock record and reappear in later layers.

The Pyrenean ibex, extinct since 2000, was briefly brought back in 2003 by which technique before the newborn died?

Cloning from the frozen skin cells of Celia, the last of her kind, produced a kid that lived only minutes because of a lung defect. That made the ibex the only animal to have gone extinct twice.

Which striped marsupial predator died out in 1936 when the last known animal died in a zoo in Hobart?

The thylacine was hunted under government bounties as a sheep killer, though studies show its jaw was too weak to kill sheep. Official protection arrived just 59 days before the last one died.

The last two confirmed birds of which penguin-like species were killed on an islet off Iceland in 1844?

The great auk was the original penguin: the word was first used for it, and explorers later gave the name to the southern birds that looked similar. The two are not closely related.

Which giant slow-moving marine mammal was hunted to extinction within 27 years of Europeans finding it in 1741?

Steller's sea cow grazed on kelp and was so easily caught that hunters wiped it out for its meat, fat and hide. It communicated with sighs and snorting sounds.

Which South African animal, striped only on its front half, died out when the last captive died in Amsterdam in 1883?

The quagga had brown and white stripes on the front of its body and a plain, horse-like rear. It was long thought to be a species of its own, but DNA showed it was a kind of plains zebra.

Outside Africa, which big cat survives in the wild only in and around Gir National Park in western India?

The lion has been confined in Asia to Gir and its surroundings since the turn of the 20th century. That population numbered only 411 in 2010 and has grown steadily since.

The Asiatic cheetah, a subspecies with fewer than 50 animals counted in 2017, survives only in which country?

Iran holds the last Asiatic cheetahs in three scattered groups across 140,000 square kilometres of its central plateau. They are the only remaining representatives of the Asian subspecies.

Which endangered filter feeder, the largest fish alive, has lost more than half its numbers in 75 years?

The whale shark wears a pattern of pale spots and stripes that is unique to each individual, and the markings even regrow over healed wounds. Targeted fishing and accidental capture drove the decline.

Which sea turtle, the largest alive, dives deeper than 1,200 metres in pursuit of its jellyfish prey?

The leatherback has no bony shell, only flexible, leather-like skin over oily flesh. It follows jellyfish into colder waters than other sea turtles feed in.

Sea otters protect Pacific kelp forests by eating which grazers that would otherwise strip them bare?

Sea urchins left unchecked inflict extensive damage on kelp forests, which is why the otter counts as a keystone species. Otters that eat many of them can end up with purple-stained teeth and bones.

On cold winter days, Florida's manatees crowd into artificial warm-water refuges created by the runoff from what?

Power plants discharge warm water that manatees seek out, because a very low metabolic rate and little insulating fat leave them unable to cope with cold. Florida's animals gather at these outfalls each winter.

The skin disease linked to extinctions of frog species on several continents is caused by what kind of organism?

A fungus causes the disease, chytridiomycosis, killing every animal in some populations and only scattered individuals in others. Research attributes its spread to international trade routes.

The golden toad, last seen in 1989, lived only in a small patch of cloud forest near Monteverde in which country?

Costa Rica's golden toads were once abundant within about four square kilometres of high forest. Only ten or eleven were seen in 1988, and a single male the year after.

Monarch butterflies have declined in North America with the loss of which plant, their caterpillars' only food?

Milkweed is laced with heart poisons that the caterpillars take in as protection. Adult monarchs are far less fussy and feed on the nectar of many plants.

In 1992 Canada closed a Newfoundland fishery that had lasted 500 years after the collapse of which fish?

Northern cod had fallen to about one percent of historic levels after decades of overfishing. Factory trawlers took in 15 years what earlier fleets had caught in a century.

Which critically endangered fish of the Caspian and Black Sea basins is heavily fished for roe sold as luxury caviar?

Beluga sturgeon females carry the valuable roe, and overfishing and poaching have greatly reduced wild numbers. The fish once lived in the Adriatic Sea as well.

The critically endangered European eel swims about 6,500 km across the Atlantic to spawn in which sea?

The Sargasso Sea is where the eels breed, after which their young spread north to Europe's coasts and rivers. Dams, overfishing and parasites have pushed the species to the brink.

Which endangered penguin, a species that moults twice a year, is the only one found north of the equator?

The Galápagos penguin survives at a tropical latitude thanks to the cool Humboldt and Cromwell Currents. It only just counts as northern, because the tip of Isabela Island crosses the equator.

Which reptile, accidentally brought to Guam after World War II, wiped out most of the island's native birds?

The brown tree snake found Guam full of prey and empty of predators, and grows larger there than at home, up to three metres. Guam holds its only breeding population outside its native range.

Which bird's 1990 listing as threatened made it the icon of the Pacific Northwest's timber wars?

The northern spotted owl depends on old-growth forest, and its listing named the loss of that habitat as the main threat. Washington state alone has lost over 90 percent of its old growth to logging.

The North Atlantic right whale's two greatest threats are entanglement in fishing gear and which other danger?

Ship strikes are a constant risk because the whales calve off Georgia and Florida, an area with heavy shipping traffic. Together the two threats account for nearly half of all deaths recorded since 1970.

Which livestock painkiller is blamed for a collapse of more than 99 percent in India's vultures, leading to a 2006 ban?

Diclofenac reached the birds through the carcasses of treated cattle and caused kidney failure. Modelling showed that under one percent of carcasses carrying the drug was enough to crash the populations.

Which small fish was at the centre of the 1978 Supreme Court case that threatened to halt Tennessee's Tellico Dam?

The snail darter won in court because the dam threatened its only known habitat, but Congress then passed a law exempting the project from the act that protected the fish.

In May 2015 a bacterial infection killed more than 120,000 of which big-nosed steppe antelope in Kazakhstan?

Saiga normally carry the bacterium harmlessly, but warm, humid weather is thought to have let it into the bloodstream. The dead made up more than a third of the world population.

The endangered okapi, a zebra-striped relative of the giraffe, lives in the wild only in which country?

DR Congo's north-eastern rainforest is the okapi's only home, and the animal stayed unknown to the Western world until the 20th century. It and the giraffe are the only living members of their family.

Africa's most endangered carnivore, a rodent-hunting wolf, survives only in the high mountains of which country?

Ethiopia's wolves live in seven isolated mountain ranges above 3,000 metres, more than half of them in the Bale Mountains. Unlike most large wild dogs, they eat almost nothing but rodents.

Which large New Zealand bird, presumed extinct for 50 years, was rediscovered in the Murchison Mountains in 1948?

The takahē was found again by Geoffrey Orbell after a carefully planned search of an isolated valley. By 2023 the population had climbed to about 500 birds.

Which Chatham Islands songbird was down to five birds in 1980, with a single breeding female called Old Blue?

The black robin was saved by moving Old Blue's first clutch each year into the nests of tomtits, which raised the chicks while she laid again. The species now numbers in the hundreds.

Which flowering tree, named after a Founding Father, has been extinct in the wild since the early 19th century?

Franklinia was found by the botanists John and William Bartram beside Georgia's Altamaha River in 1765. William collected its seeds on later trips, and the tree now survives only in cultivation.

Which word, coined in a 1996 letter to the journal Nature, means the last known individual of a species?

Endling was proposed first, and the journal printed rival suggestions weeks later, including ender and terminarch.

What term describes a charismatic animal such as the Bengal tiger, chosen to rally public support for conservation?

Flagship species are chosen to raise support for conservation in a particular place, and plants can serve too: Joshua Tree and Redwood national parks are named for theirs.