ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST 2015

Critically Endangered Species: The Western Lowland Gorilla. Photo:Jack Hynes

Our Ten Most Endangered Animals For 2015

We’ve made two important changes to All About Wildlife‘s Top 10 List of Endangered Species for 2015. Our updated Ten Most Endangered Animals list is now available for your viewing.

The first change is that we’ve replaced the Siberian tiger with . . . the tiger. In other words, while the Siberian tiger is still on our list, it now must share its spot with all the other remaining tiger subspecies: the Bengal, Indochinese, Malayan, and Sumatran tigers. We made this decision because all of the five subspecies are in deep trouble due to illegal hunting to satisfy demand for tiger body parts in China and Vietnam. Together they number fewer than 3,000 individual wild tigers—and it’s possible that as few as 2,500 remain in the forests of Asia. There are now so few tigers that it may be getting difficult for breeding-age animals to find one another in order to mate.

In addition, tiger conservationists tell us that, in spite of all the measures taken to protect tigers, illegal hunters continue to kill a couple of them every week. At this rate, we think it’s probable that within five years—by 2020—the only wild tigers remaining will be a handful in Siberia, and another handful in India, with the Indochinese, Malayan, and Sumatran tigers having slipped into functional extinction.

Based on the above, it seemed almost misleading to continue spotlighting one of the two tiger subspecies most likely to survive—at least for a little while—beyond the second decade of the 21st century.

Our second change was to restore both subspecies of western (lowland) gorilla to the list after a year’s hiatus. For 2014 we had removed the gorilla (one of our favorite creatures) to make room for the saola, or “Asian unicorn,” a tiny, delicate, little-known and seldom-seen creature from the forests of Vietnam. Of course, the western gorilla was still as Critically Endangered as ever in spite of losing its spot on our list—and we never meant to suggest otherwise. But gorillas had been on our Top Ten Endangered Species list since All About Wildlife first launched in 2009, and we wanted to draw some attention to another kind of animal. There can be only ten. . . .

However, during the second half of 2014, with the new and alarming outbreaks of the ebola virus among the human population of West Africa, the western gorilla’s problems multiplied significantly. Earlier ebola outbreaks had already devastated gorilla numbers—they catch the disease when they wander near villages where people have become ill from it—and it seems likely that the current epidemics will affect them as well. Nor are the gorilla’s other challenges, including habitat loss due to intensive logging as well as illegal hunting to supply a black-market demand for their meat, likely to abate in the next couple of years. So it became clear that the lowland gorilla had to return to our Top 10 Endangered Species list.

Of course, when we add a species, another animal must go below, to the “Also Endangered” list that runs beneath our list of the Top Ten. We at first gave thought to removing the manumea, or tooth-billed pigeon, AKA, the “little dodo,” which is the national bird of Samoa. The little dodo had already been on our list for two years, aside from which it is not a handsome bird, even as pigeons go. . . . But then we read that a 10-day expedition on one of the two islands where the manumea lives failed to turn up a single little dodo, and we realized that, not only did we need to keep it on the list, but that removing it because of its homeliness might send the terrible and mistaken message that the value of a species should be judged on how cute or cuddly we find it to be. (Another expedition fortunately did find a (very) few manumeas.)

In the end, in order to restore the lowland gorilla, we removed from the list—at least temporarily—the northern right whale. Our decision was based on the fact that, not only had the Critically Endangered northern right whale occupied a spot on our list for the past five years, but there are indications that the whale’s population may have increased a little over the past several years.

Not only is stability in the right whale’s population excellent news, but it shows that conservation efforts have been at least partially successful. It also allows us to feel good about returning the spotlight to the western gorilla, which is in desperate need of a lot more help.

That’s not to say, however, that the northern right whale will not return to out main list at some point.