Endangered Species

This splendid and majestic individual named Igor lived at the Antwerp Zoo until his death in 1995. Today, he is one of the star attractions in an exhibit called “250 Years of Natural Sciences” at the Museum of Natural Sciences (Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen) in Brussels, Belgium, and his skeleton can be viewed in the “Gallery of Humankind.”

Imagine that an individual is the last one of its kind. When it dies, the whole species is gone. Identifying the moment when a species becomes extinct is impossible unless the individual is in captivity, so this determination is usually made retrospectively.

Here’s a staggering statistic: more than 99% of all species—that’s over five billion species—that ever lived on this planet are now extinct. So, is extinction a biological tragedy, or it is a normal and unavoidable part of life on Earth?

Several factors make the Galápagos tortoise particularly prone to decline. In the 16th century, their numbers topped 250,000. By the 1970s, their numbers had dwindled to 3000. A conservation success story has brought them back to nearly 20,000 today.

The Australian lungfish is one of the oldest vertebrates on Earth. It lives in the slow rivers of Queensland. Threatened by the loss of its breeding grounds and the introduction of translocated tilapia, the species is classified as Vulnerable (VU).  

Tasmanian ranchers mistakenly thought this carnivorous marsupial threatened their sheep, and so thylacines were systematically eliminated in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The very last one died in captivity on September 7, 1936.

The very last one died in captivity on September 7, 1936. In Australia, September 7 is now National Threatened Species Day.  

Danger, danger! The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, and scientists predict that by 2030, the Arctic Ocean may be entirely ice-free in the summer months. Many polar species depend on the ice to survive.

Overfishing, mining, oil and gas development, shipping, and higher average yearly temperatures brought about by global warming threaten their survival.

Currently classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN, polar bears have become a powerful symbol of species threatened by human activity.

In 1955, Josef J. Fénykövi killed this African elephant near his 1000-acre ranch in Angola in southwestern Africa. It was the largest elephant ever shot.

The big game hunter gifted it to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., to be prepared for display by its taxidermy staff. Today, it stands in a place of honor in the central rotunda of this museum for everyone to admire.

In the early part of the 20th century, there may have been as many as 3.5 million African elephants. Today, there are about 470,000. They are threatened by poachers who supply the illegal ivory trade and by habitat loss due to deforestation.

Sometimes, the accidental or careless introduction of a non-native plant or animals can threaten the survival of a species. 

This 133,000-square-mile wonder off the coast of Queensland, Australia, contains the world’s largest single structure made by living organisms, with 400 kinds of coral, 1,500 species of fish, and 4,000 types of mollusk.

It is the habitat of several threatened species, such as the dugong (sea cow) and the large green turtle. The GBR is so vast that it can be seen from outer space! A large part of the reef is protected by the GBR Marine Park, which helps limit the impact of the human footprint.

About one-quarter of the coral reefs in the world are considered damaged beyond repair and another half are under serious threat. Major threats include destructive fishing practices, overfishing, careless tourism, pollution, erosion, mining, and global warming.