TOP 10 MOST FAMOUS ENDANGERED SPECIES (2017-18)
They’re known as “charismatic mega fauna” for a reason. These endangered animals ooze star power, a factor that conservationists have capitalized on in order to fund projects to protect them (and, often by default, the other organisms that share their complex ecosystems). People are far more likely to donate money to save an adorable panda or a magnificent tiger than they are to drop some shekels on preserving the limbless worm skink or the Gerlach’s cockroach. However, skunks and roaches are integral participants in their ecosystems as well and just as deserving of assistance as their flashier compatriots.
You might then consider the animals on this list the A-listers whose box office draw finances the continued existence of the lesser-known character actors who inhabit the same environments.
You might then consider the animals on this list the A-listers whose box office draw finances the continued existence of the lesser-known character actors who inhabit the same environments.
GIANT PANDA (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)
Everyone loves a panda…they might be the thickest animal
humanity has driven to the brink of extinction yet. From stuffed animals to martial arts-trained CGI abominations, we just can’t seem to get enough of the bi-colored beasts. Though their “aww factor” may verge on the cloying, it hasn’t been without effect. China, which is home to the remaining wild population of fewer than 2,500 individuals, has since the late 1980s instituted more stringent habitat protections and poaching has all but ceased. Their status is still tenuous, though. Their range is fragmented and they are still subject to disease, occasional and starvation when large swathes of the bamboo on which they feed completes its life cycle and dies.
humanity has driven to the brink of extinction yet. From stuffed animals to martial arts-trained CGI abominations, we just can’t seem to get enough of the bi-colored beasts. Though their “aww factor” may verge on the cloying, it hasn’t been without effect. China, which is home to the remaining wild population of fewer than 2,500 individuals, has since the late 1980s instituted more stringent habitat protections and poaching has all but ceased. Their status is still tenuous, though. Their range is fragmented and they are still subject to disease, occasional and starvation when large swathes of the bamboo on which they feed completes its life cycle and dies.
TIGER (Panthera tigris)
William Blake’s “forests of the night,” the stalking grounds of the six subspecies of tiger, are burning bright. Slash-and-burn agriculture, along with logging, and human encroachment, have hugely diminished the habitat available to these felines, which require extensive ranges capable of supporting the large herbivores that constitute the bulk of their diets. Poaching—for trophies and body parts used in Asian “medicine” —is thought to pose the greatest threat to tigers. Probably fewer than 4,000 are left in the wild. In 2014, China explicitly outlawed the consumption of endangered species, including tigers, whose bones, penises, and other organs are superstitiously believed to have magical curative powers.
WHOOPING CRANE (Grus americana)
WHOOPING CRANE (Grus americana)
Though a plan that involved transferring whooping crane eggs to the nests of related sand hill cranes for fostering ultimately failed, captive rearing and reintroduction have established two wild populations in Florida, one of which has been taught to migrate to Wisconsin. Neither is self-sustaining. The only self-sustaining population migrates between Alberta, Canada, and Texas, U.S.
- BLUE WHALE (Balaenoptera musculus)
There are fewer than 25,000 blue whales, the largest animals on the planet. Comprising several subspecies, blue whales are found in all of the world’s oceans save the Arctic. The current population is thought to have been reduced by up to 90% by whaling in the 20th century. Commercial hunting of the species was ultimately banned in 1966. The National Marine Fisheries Service of the U.S. spelled out a recovery plan in 1998. It stipulated the maintenance of photo databases of individual specimens and the collection of genetic and migration data in order to better understand the species, which remains at risk from ship collisions and entanglement in fishing nets.
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