Which Animals Are Going Extinct? The 32 Closest Ones Are Often Overlooked

[UngulateNerd92]

My quest to find the most endangered species revealed there are a LOT of species in big trouble — and the most famous ones aren’t the closest to the edge.

Pop quiz: How many endangered species can you name? Odds are, your list is something like: tigers, rhinos, gorillas, orangutans, pandas. If you’re a diehard endangered species aficionado, you may have even said Amur leopard, black rhino, mountain gorilla, Bornean orangutan — ah, but not giant pandas, which were upgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” a few years ago.

When I set out to write this story, all I wanted to know was which species are actually closest to extinction. Which ones really might vanish tomorrow? Turns out, that’s a terribly complicated question.

The official, exhaustive endangered species list is maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature — the IUCN’s (in)famous Red List. Of the 120,356(!) plants, animals and fungi the group has assessed, 882 are declared extinct, 6,807 are critically endangered, and 11,731 are just endangered. These determinations are based on a number of variables and rankings. Since nobody wants to read a list of “The 18,000 (or So) Most Endangered Species,” I decided to narrow things down by focusing on critically endangered vertebrates — animals with backbones, such as birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and fish. There are 1,983 critically endangered vertebrate species.

Which Animals Are Going Extinct? The 32 Closest Ones Are Often Overlooked

 

[UngulateNerd92]

In my opinion, many of these species on this list if not all of them need to have an ex-situ breeding program initiated for them, thus each having a captive insurance population. Being how well other Cavia sp. seem to do in captivity, I think a captive breeding program for Santa Catarina's guinea pig (Cavia intermedia) could be very beneficial.

 

[Dassie rat]

My quest to find the most endangered species revealed there are a LOT of species in big trouble — and the most famous ones aren’t the closest to the edge.

Pop quiz: How many endangered species can you name? Odds are, your list is something like: tigers, rhinos, gorillas, orangutans, pandas. If you’re a diehard endangered species aficionado, you may have even said Amur leopard, black rhino, mountain gorilla, Bornean orangutan — ah, but not giant pandas, which were upgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” a few years ago.

When I set out to write this story, all I wanted to know was which species are actually closest to extinction. Which ones really might vanish tomorrow? Turns out, that’s a terribly complicated question.

The official, exhaustive endangered species list is maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature — the IUCN’s (in)famous Red List. Of the 120,356(!) plants, animals and fungi the group has assessed, 882 are declared extinct, 6,807 are critically endangered, and 11,731 are just endangered. These determinations are based on a number of variables and rankings. Since nobody wants to read a list of “The 18,000 (or So) Most Endangered Species,” I decided to narrow things down by focusing on critically endangered vertebrates — animals with backbones, such as birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and fish. There are 1,983 critically endangered vertebrate species.

Which Animals Are Going Extinct? The 32 Closest Ones Are Often Overlooked

I agree with most of the animals listed in the attachment, but the addax is very abundant in captivity and there is little chance of it becoming an extinct species. There is a difference between a species being extinct and a species being extinct in the wild. I also need to point out that the Amur leopard and mountain gorilla are not species and that the first list includes 'species' that contain more than one species

 

[Onychorhynchus coronatus]

A bit of a hodgepodge of species in this article but generally it was really good.

The inclusion of most of these was awesome and I was glad to see some that are in media spotlight terms really quite obscure like the Antioquia brushfinch, Vietnamese pond turtle and Hainan gibbon.

A couple of them are already kind of iconic species already in conservation terms. Although the average Joe may not know about them they are known by many people because of an ex-situ presence in zoos so basically species like the Bali starling / myna and addax.

At least with one of them, the red wolf ,there is still a controversial debate on whether it constitutes a species but evidence seems to suggest that it is genetically distinct from coyotes and wolves but is also an admixture of these.

 

[Dassie rat]

I wonder if there would be more interest in the Bali starling if its name reverted to Rothschild's grackle. Many zoos keep the species, so it has little chance of becoming extinct.

 

[Onychorhynchus coronatus]

I wonder if there would be more interest in the Bali starling if its name reverted to Rothschild's grackle. Many zoos keep the species, so it has little chance of becoming extinct.

I do like Bali starlings / mynas but I agree that the author could have chosen a different species considering that that the myna has been the subject of conservation efforts for a long time and is already a bit of an iconic conservation "rockstar" bird.

On that note there is a paper I've been wanting to read called "The future of the Bali Starling (Leucopsar rothschildi) - New perspectives for in situ and ex situ conservation" but it is unfortunately stuck behind paywalls and not even the usually excellent sci-hub can access it.