Friday, June 12, 2009

List of world's most endangered animals

White Rhino



This African native one horned giant is featured in Critically endangered list of IUCN.
Threats of its extinction are mainly coming from poachers. With the death of one last month there are 4 more remaining.Though the death was natural one as it was 44 years old. But the truth is that with the last four remaining there are fewer chances that our next generation will see this beautiful animal
Timber Wolf


A Timber Wolf, more commonly known as a Gray Wolf located in Montebello, Outaouais, in Quebec, Canada. This species of wolf is the largest member of the Canidae family, which includes coyotes, jackals and wolves.
These Canadian wolves live in families and form one of the strongest social life structures on earth. But they are becoming extinct because of a lot of human intervention.



Red Panda

So innocent and cute but these red panda's are becoming very extinct. The Red Panda is a very cute animal and is usually found in the mountainous band from Nepal all the way into China. Only a few of them are alive in the wild. It's a real shame that animals like this find their way onto the endangered animal list.




Western Lowland Gorilla

Populations of these apes in central Africa have collapsed due to the commercial bush meat trade and the Ebola virus. And in Indonesia, orangutans are critically endangered because of forest logging and clearing land for palm oil plantations. Many great apes are becoming endangered, as their habitat is continually under threat from human activities.These apes were included into he IUCN Red list of endangered animals in September 2007.





Polar Bear

Through early ice break up in arctic regions such as Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada as a result of global warming as well as through pollution, the polar bear has been deemed a threatened animal. These animals are deemed as threatened animals under the Endangered Species act USA. Early impact of global warming can be seen as this is becoming a serious threat for the future of many animals including this Bear. As arctic dwelling animals, polar bears rely on the build up of sea ice in order to access their food source - ringed seals, which live in abundance in Arctic waters. The late arrival of snow and ice build up due to global warming in places such as Hudson Bay in Manitoba, combined with the early sea ice break up in spring means that the window for polar bears to hunt seals is greatly reduced. A shorter hunt means that they don't have enough time to build up their body fat reserves. Hence hunting for food becomes tough due to this weakness.






Iberian Lynx(Lynx pardinus):


Also known as Spanish Lynx is a critically endangered cat species native to the Iberian peninsula in Southren Europe.
Iberian Lynx is the most endangered cat species in the world. The latest studies, based on DNA analysis, make depressing reading. Despite decades of protection, millions of pesetas and euros spent, hundreds of studies, and the work of some of Europe’s best conservationists and zoologists, just over one hundred viable adults remain in the wild . Whoever and is to blame, the lynx’s imminent disappearance will be the first extinction of a world feline, discounting sub-species of tigers and lions, since the sabre-toothed tiger some 10,000 years ago and will forever leave a dark mark on Spanish conservationism.



Sloth

Sloth belongs to edentate family.Edentate family includes anteaters, armadillos and echidnas. Most animals in this group either threatened or endangered. All sloths have three tows, but to toed sloths only have two claws. These animals often hunt in packs.These creaters can rotate their heads to 270 degrees. Sloths move slowly to avoid predators like hawks. They can actually mave faster and can slash with their claws. Algae is their main snack and they can feed on themselves when they are hungary as sloths having more than 600 species of bacteria, plants and animals living on them. But The sad part is that these lovely creaters are included in the list of endangered animals.



Grévy's zebra

These Zebras are also known as Imperial Zebras and are the largest species of zebras. Compared to others zebras these are tall, have large years and strips are narrower. They are named after French president Jules Grévy. These animals are now in the red list of Endangered animals due to hunting for it's skin which has a very high price in the world market. Also suffers habitat destruction, human disturbances at water holes and competition with domestic grazing animals.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Endangered species news

Medicine and endangered species: World Health Organization

In a statement from World Health Organization, nearly 80 percent of the world’s population depends for its primary health care needs on medicines derived from plants and animals. This is especially true in countries where traditional medicines are widely used. Increasingly, however, modern medicines and remedies also contain animal and plant derivatives. Given growing populations, increasing wealth, and the spreading popularity of natural remedies around the world, the demand for these medicines and remedies is rising. The rising demand, combined with reduced habitat, has caused an alarming increase in the number of plant and animal species (used for medicinal purposes) at risk.

Endangered species

Endangered species is a population of organisms which are at the risk of becoming extinct because these are either very few in number or threatened by changing environment, predation parameters and human intervention. The International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN) has calculated the percentage of endangered species as 40 percent of all organisms based on the sample of species that have been evaluated through 2006. Many nations have laws offering protection to the threatened species. But not all the species could make it to the list of threatened species as these are not noticed. Many more species become extinct without gaining public notice.
There are now 41,415 species on the IUCN Red List and 16,306 of them are threatened with extinction, up from 16,118 last year. This includes both endangered animals and endangered plants.

In the last 500 years, human activity is known to have
forced 820 species to extinction (or extinction in the wild).