Thanks mainly to the efforts of China, who claim the Giant Panda as their national animal, the IUCN’s latest estimates appear to show a panda populous of around 2,000 animals.
Advertisement
Eastern gorillas populate the mountainous forests of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, northwest Rwanda and southwest Uganda, making them another victim of the region’s civil wars.
The Eastern Gorilla, which is the world’s largest primate, is on the brink of extinction as hunting continues to drive down its population, wildlife experts say.
“Just by restoring the panda’s habitat, that’s given them back their space and made food available to them”, said Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of IUCN’s Red List.
Four of the six great apes are now critically endangered, the IUCN says.
One of the world’s most iconic endangered species is no longer on the endangered species list!
As the population of giant pandas in the wild increases, China’s national icon has been downgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” on the Red List maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The animals live in small, isolated groups of as few as 10 that struggle to reproduce and face the risk of disappearing altogether, the administration said. On the updated list, the status of giant pandas was changed from “endangered” to “vulnerable”. Worldwide groups and the Chinese government have worked to save them in the wild and breed them – often in the face of criticism that the huge costs could have been better spent on saving other animals.
“To see the Eastern gorilla – one of our closest cousins – slide towards extinction is truly distressing”, said Inger Andersen, IUCN Director General.
One of the two subspecies, the Grauer’s gorilla which is only found in eastern DRC, has lost 77% of its population since 1994, with numbers falling from 16,900 to just 3,800 in 2015, the conservationists said.
Conservation actions have also paid off for the Tibetan Antelope, which has moved from Endangered to Near Threatened.
But the dramatic decline in population isn’t unique to this species of gorilla. One subspecies Grauer’s gorilla has lost nearly 80 percent of its population in past two decades and their numbers have dropped drastically from 16,900 individuals in 1994 to just 3,800 individuals in 2015 while the other subspecies only has around 880 individuals.
Advertisement
Among other changes, the IUCN said the population of plains zebra in Africa had fallen to about 500,000 animals from 660,000, also because of hunting for their meat and stripy skins.
