“To see the eastern gorilla – one of our closest cousins – slide toward extinction is truly distressing”, Inger Andersen, IUCN director general, said in a statement.
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Also, two species endemic to Australia, the Greater Stick-nest Rat and the Bridled Nailtail Wallaby, have also had their status improved – from “vulnerable” to “near threatened” and from “endangered” to “vulnerable” respectively – due to successful recovery and conservation programs.
The Grauer’s gorilla population has declined by 77 percent and now features on the “critically endangered species” list. 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.
While this is certainly good news for pandas, the population is far from thriving.
In an interview, Catherine Novelli, U.S. undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, called the gorilla numbers a man-made tragedy.
Bushmeat hunting and civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are major drivers of the collapse of the population of Grauer’s gorillas, researchers say. Killing the apes is against the law, but that doesn’t appear to deter people from hunting the animals.
“This iconic species, which is the poster child of endangered species globally, no longer qualifies as endangered”, Swaisgood said.
As well as the gorillas, the Plains Zebra has moved to “near threatened|” and three species of African antelope – Bay Duiker (Cephalophus dorsalis), White-bellied Duiker (Cephalophus leucogaster) and Yellow-backed Duiker – have also been made “near threatened”.
Andrew Plumptre of the Wildlife Conservation Society, the lead author of the revised listing, said that acknowledging its threatened status may help us to turn the population around. The World Wildlife Fund estimates there are around 1,900 pandas left in the wild and just over 2,000 in total. The Chimpanzee and the Bonobo are both listed as “Endangered”.
At the end of 2015, China had 1,864 giant pandas in the wild, increasing from about 1,100 in 2000, and there were 422 in captivity, according to the SFA.
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The panda population reached an estimated low of less than 1,000 in the 1980s due to poaching and deforestation until Beijing threw its full weight behind preserving the animal, which has been sent to zoos around the world as a gesture of Chinese diplomatic goodwill.
