A leading worldwide group has taken the giant panda off its endangered list thanks to decades of conservation efforts, but China’s government discounted the move on Monday, saying it did not view the status of the country’s beloved symbol as any less serious.
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“To see the Eastern gorilla – one of our closest cousins – slide towards extinction is truly distressing”, said Inger Andersen, director general of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) which compiles the Red List.
It may be the poster animal for endangered species awareness, but it appears the giant panda has bounced back.
The giant panda is off the endangered list thanks to aggressive conservation efforts in China.
Wildlife organisations hailed the recovery of the Giant Panda, whose estimated numbers fell to below 1,000 in the 1980s.
The IUCN warned, however, that the good news for pandas could be short-lived.
Yet this success could be short-lived, as climate change is predicted to wipe out more than one-third of the panda’s bamboo habitat in the next 80 years. The second subspecies of Eastern Gorilla – the Mountain Gorilla (G. b. beringei) -is faring better and has increased in number to around 880 individuals.
Nearly one third – 23,928 – are threatened with extinction, it said.
“Critical endangered status will raise the profile of this gorilla subspecies and bring attention to its plight”.
So-called panda diplomacy, however, has not been without controversy, as the Christian Science Monitor’s Molly Jackson reported previous year. Among the great apes, the eastern gorilla, western gorilla, Bornean orangutan and Sumatran orangutan are now listed as critically endangered, while the chimpanzee and bonobo are both endangered.
One of those subspecies, Grauer’s gorilla, lost 77% of its population since 1994, declining from 16,900 individuals to just 3,800 in 2015, the IUCN said.
A surge in illegal hunting is threatening the eastern gorilla, the world’s largest primate, an global conservation group has said.
The gorillas – which live in the forests of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, northwest Rwanda and southwest Uganda – have been classified as “critically endangered”.
The IUCN compiles its peer-reviewed Red List alongside partners such as universities and environmental groups within animals’ natural habitat.
In the past 20 years, Grauer’s gorillas have been severely affected by human activities, the victim of poaching for bushmeat for those working in mining camps and for commercial trade, the IUCN said.
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Conservation actions have also paid off for the Tibetan Antelope, which has moved from Endangered to Near Threatened.
