Welcome to Endangered Species List, the site which tracks the list of endangered species across the world, bringing you news and information about these often stunning creatures. The site also keeps a list of recently extinct species to show what can happen if action is not taken soon enough. There is also includes a section for charities who are trying to raise funds for the protection of our most at risk species.
Endangered Species List
Should the location of newly discovered species be hidden?
Discovering a new species can be the defining moment of a biologist’s career, but for some it can also mean exposing rare and vulnerable animals to the dark world of the wildlife pet trade, with catastrophic results.
It’s a scientific dilemma that has led some conservationists to question whether it would be better to hide their findings from the world.
In 1999, herpetologist Bryan Stuart was working in Northern Laos when he stumbled across an eye-catching newt he had never seen before.
The creature was prehistoric in its appearance with thick, warty skin and bright, yellow dots all the way down its back.
He spotted it in a bottle of alcohol that a Lao colleague had brought back from a wedding in a remote part of the country – the poison from the newt’s skin had been used to make a drink with special medicinal properties for a toast to the newlyweds.
Stuart went in search of the newt in the wild and three years later he published an article in the Journal of Herpetology, announcing the discovery of the new species, Laotriton laoensis.
“When you see one of these animals in the wild in your hand for the first time and you recognise that it is absolutely unique, it’s like discovering a treasure,” he says.
But his joy turned to horror when he realised his discovery had caught the attention of amphibian dealers around the world. Examples of the species were popping up in pictures on amphibian pet forums as far away as Germany and Japan.
Stuart soon realised that trading networks had emerged between Laos and the West and traders were using his report as a roadmap to capture and sell hordes of the newts.
“The mindset of these commercial collectors is to go in, get as many as you can, as quickly as you can, to make as much money as possible,” he says.
“What’s worse is they have set up these trade networks with local villagers telling them to collect as many as they can.”
The Lao newt lives on the surface of rock pools and was easy to find. Villagers were typically offered less than $1 (£0.63) for each newt. Smugglers then sold them on to hobbyists for as much as $200 (£130).
Because the newt is unique to Laos and only found in three small areas in the north of the country, the population was quickly decimated.
In 2008, six years after the publication of Stuart’s paper, a biologist from the National University of Laos, Somphouthone Phimmachak, proved the species was close to extinction. Her work led to the Lao newt being granted official status as a threatened species, making it illegal to trade specimens caught in the wild.
It wasn’t the first time a scientific discovery has put a rare species in danger.
“A turtle from the small Indonesian island of Roti was so heavily hunted that today it is nearly extinct in the wild,” says Stuart. A rare gecko from south-east China was removed from its natural habitat entirely by smugglers who got prices as high as $2,000 (£1,272) for each.
Jason Lee Brown, a herpetologist who has studied poison frogs in Peru since 2003, describes three separate incidents where his discoveries put a species’ existence under threat.
In 2006 he published the picture of a new species of poison frog, Ranitomeya benedicta on the internet. Almost immediately it appeared in trade shows in Europe and North America.
Two years later it happened again when he published the description of a second new species and again when he reported the rediscovery of a third species thought to be extinct.
In 2010 Brown returned to the area in Peru where he had initially discovered R. benedicta and found that locals had been cutting down canopies in the trees where the frogs were known to live.
“I almost quit what I was doing,” he says.
Unlike the Lao newt, none of these species was declared threatened.
Endangered species status is meted out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), according to the convention on trade in endangered species (Cites). It was first signed in 1973 and has now been ratified by 175 countries.
But according to some conservationists, endangered species status creates new problems. Chris Shepherd of Traffic, an organisation that monitors the wildlife trade, believes the endangered label can boost animals’ black market value.
He regularly visits the wildlife markets of Jatinegara in Jakarta and Chatuchak in Bangkok where he has seen traders advertising the fact – albeit slyly – that the animals they sell are endangered and illegal.
Traffic is working to train local law enforcement agencies to clamp down on illegal wildlife trade. But obliterating wildlife trade is low on the political agenda in countries such as Laos, Indonesia, Thailand and Peru.
“Customs have a very important role to play being at the front line of import and export,” says Shepherd. “But finding a customs officer anywhere in the world that cares much about newts is difficult.”
Relying on governments in developing countries to address the issue is pointless, agrees Jason Lee Brown, who got little help from the Peruvian authorities when he drew cases of frog smuggling to their attention.
“There is widespread apathy, they have so many issues to deal with that are more important and they just don’t have the infrastructure to deal with this,” he says.
He believes the responsibility lies with those in the developed world who are driving the pet market.
Peruvian hunters, many of whom live on $1.25 (£0.79) a day, can get about $2 (£1.30) a frog. Collectors in Europe and the US will pay up to $1,000 (£636) a pair, making smuggling a very lucrative business.
Some people believe the only viable solution to the trade of wild animals is captive breeding.
Mark Pepper, who has worked with Brown on frog conservation projects in Peru, runs a legal and ethical frog breeding business but sometimes he finds illegal traders selling species he has never worked with under his name.
He thinks smuggling is not the most pressing threat to amphibians. For some species, such as the Lao newt, smuggling can have a devastating effect, but most amphibians face the much greater threat of habitat destruction.
Timber felling and mining are a much greater risk to the frogs he has studied in Peru, he says.
“Smuggling is a drop in the bucket.”
The logical thing it seems would be to keep the locations of the animals secret and some scientists do choose to do this.
Last year the New York Times reported that a herpetologist in Malaysia, Indraneil Das rediscovered a striking amphibian called the Borneo rainbow toad previously thought to be extinct. Das avoided publishing its specific location.
Similarly, after his experience with the Lao newt, Bryan Stuart discovered a species of poison snake and decided to keep its location secret. But it was something he was uncomfortable doing.
He believes that scientists need to share knowledge of which species occurs where so that they can co-operate with each other and the public to preserve the species and its habitat.
Bitterns: the endangered birds whose population is booming at last
The boom of the bittern is being heard across Britain once again, after more than a century in which the bird has hovered on the edge of extinction.
Noted for its foghorn-like call or “boom”, the bittern has made a recovery in numbers that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) described last week as “a phenomenal success”.
However, experts warn that the bird, one of Britain’s rarest, still faces severe threats posed by climate change. “Bitterns are not out of danger yet,” said Grahame Madge of the RSPB. “On the other hand, this is a very encouraging trend.”
The bittern is a secretive bird and its subtle colouring makes it hard to spot in its wetland surroundings – although its mating call, which can be heard several miles away, testifies to its presence.
It was once common across the UK, but numbers began to fall in the Middle Ages – the bird was considered a delicacy and was eaten at banquets up to Tudor times. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the bird became a popular target for taxidermists. The drainage of England’s wetlands devastated the surviving population and by 1886 the bird had disappeared from Britain.
Early in the 20th century the population slowly began to return and by the 1950s there were 60 bitterns in the UK, but water pollution then destroyed its habitat. By 1997, the bird’s numbers had fallen back to 11.
“We created a research programme to save the bittern and discovered the major threat was not the loss of their habitat, but a degradation of it,” said Madge. “Bitterns prefer living in particularly wet reed beds, where they can fish easily. But mud often builds up and the reed beds dry up. In large wetlands, small patches will always dry up and new ones form. However, nature reserves are hemmed in today and there is little opportunity for new reed beds to form when the old ones die out.” Litter only makes the problem worse, he added.
The bittern has been classified by the EU as a “priority species”. With European funding, the RSPB lowered reed beds at several reserves and pumped out mud, creating improved habitats. A new site was set up at Lakenheath in Suffolk. Today there are at least 100 bitterns, most of them in southern England.
However, climate change means some habitats are vulnerable to rising sea levels, particularly the important RSPB site at Minsmere in Suffolk, where tides could flood freshwater areas with salt water, ruining them for the bittern. Droughts also endanger the species by drying out wetlands.
The RSPB is now working to create new inland nesting areas. “We no longer have a landscape where natural processes can take place on a large scale, so conservationists must work within the areas that are available,” said Madge.
“Creating bigger wetlands not only houses a larger diversity of species but also buffers against climate change. If the RSPB’s legacy of habitat creation and preservation is maintained, the unique and dynamic bittern’s boom can continue to sound out across our wetlands.”
2011 saw dramatic increase in rhino killings
January 14 2012
The devastating poaching onslaught on SA’s rhinos is continuing, with a record number – 448 – being killed last year.
This total includes 19 black rhinos, a critically endangered species of which fewer than 5 000 remain in the wild.
The toll is a 34 percent increase over 2010, when poachers killed 333 SA rhinos, and nearly four times the 122 lost in 2009.
Last year also saw the demise of rhinos in Vietnam, when the last Javan rhinoceros in the country was killed by poachers and its horn removed in October.
“If left unchecked, poaching gangs could put the survival of these iconic species in jeopardy,” warned Dr Colman O Criodain, wildlife-trade policy analyst for international conservation group WWF.
The group’s comments about official government statistics came the same week SANParks authorities announced that a further 11 dead rhinos had been found in the Kruger National Park.
More than half of SA’s rhino deaths have occurred in the world-famous park, with 252 last year alone.
WWF noted that SA had increased its law-enforcement efforts to curb rhino poaching, but the killing had accelerated.
“The bottom line is more rhinos than ever were poached in 2011,” O Criodain said.
Dr Morné du Plessis, chief executive of WWF-SA, said rhino poaching was being conducted by sophisticated international criminal syndicates that smuggled the horns to Asia.
“It’s not enough to bust the little guy. Investigators need to shut down the kingpins organising these criminal operations. Governments in Africa and Asia must work together across borders to stop the illegal trade.”
SA law enforcement officials made 232 poaching-related arrests in 2011, compared to 165 in 2010.
WWF noted that sentences imposed for rhino crimes had also increased in recent years, with poachers and horn smugglers receiving as long as 16 years in prison.
It pointed out the recent upsurge in rhino poaching had been linked to increased demand for rhino horn in Asia – particularly Vietnam, where it carried prestige as a luxury item, as a post-partying cleanser, and also as a purported cancer cure.
Tom Milliken, rhino trade expert of wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic (Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce), a joint programme of WWF and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said rhino horn had gained popularity among wealthy Vietnamese elite and business people.
“(They) give it as a gift, when currying political favour, or take it as an antidote to over-indulgence. But killing endangered rhinos to mitigate a hangover is a criminal way to see in the new year.”
The group said that according to traditional Chinese medicine experts, rhino horn had no proven cancer-treating properties and, contrary to popular myth, it had never been used in traditional medicine as an aphrodisiac.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) has found that consumer demand in Vietnam is driving much of the rhino poaching and the convention has told Vietnam, which signed the convention in 1994, that it must show progress in curtailing illegal trade in rhino parts and derivatives.
“So far we have yet to see Vietnam respond to this ruling from Cites,” O Criodain said.
“For that matter, Cites must put pressure on Vietnam to respond meaningfully, as it has done with other countries whose compliance with the convention has been called into question.”
A bilateral treaty to ramp up law-enforcement collaboration between SA and Vietnam had been negotiated in September last year, but remained unsigned, it noted.
l According to the latest rhino statistics, there are 4 838 black rhino left and the species is classified as “critically endangered”.
Most of these animals occur in southern Africa.
In November last year, the western black rhino subspecies from West Africa, and particularly Cameroon, was declared officially extinct.
There are about 20 000 white rhino, a species that veteran SA conservationist Ian Player and colleagues saved from extinction.
They started in the 1950s, after numbers had dropped to fewer than 100 in 1900. The species is now classified as “near threatened”.
SA’s total rhino population is estimated at 1 916 black and 18 780 white.
There are three Asian species: the greater one-horned rhino, of which 2 913 remain with a “vulnerable” classification; the Javan rhino, “critically endangered”, with a population of not more than 50 animals; and the Sumatran rhino, of which fewer than 200 remain and which is also classified as “critically endangered”. – Weekend Argus
John Yeld
Endangered species ‘at risk’ following Christmas Island spill
January 13, 2012
Concerns are rising in Australia for a number of endangered species after a bulk carrier ship ran aground on Christmas Island, releasing oil and phosphate into the surrounding waters.
A stretch of beach 60m long has been affected by the spill and environmentalists are worried about the welfare of a number of animals including whale sharks, coral, 17 species of endemic land crab and at least two varieties of birds.
The 78m Panamanian-flagged ‘MV Tycoon’ was being loaded with phosphate fertiliser in Flying Fish Cove when it broke from its mooring on Sunday. The crew were safely evacuated but weather conditions were so bad that it soon broke in half and began to sink.
The Australian Maritime Safety Association has estimated that about 102 tonnes of intermediate fuel oil, 11,000 l. of lubricant oil, 32 tonnes of diesel oil and approximately 260 tonnes of phosphate were on board the vessel and that the majority of this will have been released into the sea.
Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Toby Stone said: “The bad news is that there could be no containment operation because of the very severe swell and weather conditions.
“But, there’s a positive side to that; the bad weather has helped to break up and disperse a lot of the oil naturally.”
However, Conservation Council of WA environmental science and policy coordinator Nic Dunlop who used to live on the island is concerned that January is a critical time in the biological cycles of many of the species there. Any land crabs returning to shore after spawning will face a coastline contaminated by oils and phosphate. Today has seen some red crabs start to come ashore which is a good sign but he is also worried that the whale sharks may suffer too:
“The whale sharks come to Christmas Island specifically to feed on the land crab larvae and they could be ingesting contaminates in the process of foraging. They are particularly at risk from this event.”
A marine casualty coordinator and pollution expert has been brought in to assess the damage but currently everything is on hold until the weather improves. Meanwhile, islanders remain concerned that food supplies may not be able to reach the island and that their tourism may be affected. A number have already offered their help when the clean-up finally gets under way.
Philippines seizes meat of endangered anteaters
Thursday, January 5, 2012
MANILA — Philippine authorities have seized large shipments of anteater and turtle parts in a sign that the illegal trade in the endangered animals is booming, officials said Wednesday.
Fifty-eight pounds (26.5 kilograms) of Philippine pangolin, or anteater, about to be smuggled to Manila as goat meat was confiscated Wednesday at the Puerto Princesa city airport in southwestern Palawan province, said Alex Marcaida, an environment official.
On Monday, 209 pounds (95 kilograms) of pangolin scales and 200 pounds (90.5 kilograms) of scutes from endangered hawksbill and green turtles were seized at the same airport, he said. That shipment, which had a market value of nearly 1 million pesos ($23,000), was declared as dried fish.
Pangolin is a Chinese delicacy. Its scales are used in Chinese traditional medicine.
Turtle scutes — the plates that cover the shells — are used to decorate guitars and other products.
Marcaida said it’s possible traders are increasingly turning their attention to Palawan, home to many exotic wildlife, for pangolin meat because the animal’s population has been vanishing in other parts of Southeast Asia due to hunting and deforestation.
The International Union of Conservation of Nature said rising demand for pangolins, mostly from mainland China, and lax laws are wiping out the unique toothless anteaters from their forest habitat in Southeast Asia.
The animals are protected by laws in many Asian nations, and an international ban on their trade has been in effect since 2002. But these measures have had little impact on the illicit trade, the IUCN said.
The IUCN lists the Philippine pangolin, which is endemic to Palawan, as close to becoming a threatened species.
But Marcaida, who is from the government’s Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, said the Philippines considers the mammal a threatened species because of the continuing illegal trade.
He said the strict monitoring of trading in live pangolin may have prompted traders to try to smuggle them as meat and scales. A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of pangolin scales sells for 5,000 pesos ($114).
The same traders may be behind the two shipments, Marcaida said, adding that no arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.
The shipper of Wednesday’s haul left the cargo with an airport porter, while Monday’s shipment, which was bound for central Cebu city, went through a courier company, he said.
Pale octopus, hairy-chested yeti crab and other new species found
A world of previously unseen creatures has been found thriving next to boiling vents of water, several miles under the surface of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. Hundreds of hairy-chested yeti crabs, a mysterious-looking pale octopus and colonies of limpets, snails and barnacles were found by British scientists at a hydrothermal vent located in the ocean’s East Scotia Ridge.
Prof Alex Rogers of Oxford University used a remotely operated vehicle called Isis to scout the sea bed around the ridge, which spans about 2.4km and features springs of black, smoky water that can reach temperatures of almost 400C (752F). The hydrothermal vents are powered by underwater volcanoes, and the scalding temperatures and rich mineral content of the water gives rise to vast rocky chimneys that support a wide variety of life forms.
“The visually dominant species are the yeti crabs, which occur in fantastically high densities, up to 600 per square metre around the southern ridge,” said Rogers, who led the expedition aboard the RSS James Cook in January 2010. “Also high densities of stalked barnacles, a large snail from a group called the peltospiroids, and we’ve also got small, green limpets which occur all over the vents.”
The first-known yeti crab, Kiwa hirsuta, was described living near a hydrothermal vent in the south pacific in 2005 and, since then, several species have been discovered in different parts of the undersea world. Around other hydrothermal vents, however, these creatures tend occur in lower numbers; and the new species found in the ESR are not only more numerous but also visually distinct.
“Hirsuta has long hairs on its limbs and its claws, whereas our yeti crabs have extremely hairy chests. One of the nicknames of the crabs which developed during the cruise was the Hasselhoff crabs because they had these dense mats of [hair] on their undersides, the equivalents of their chests.”
Another striking creature spotted by the scientists was a pale octopus, which was photographed by the team. Rogers suspected it might be a new species related to the Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis seen at other underwater vents around the world.
In total, the expedition brought back more than 12,000 samples of rocks, bacteria and animals. Rogers said: “One of the staggering things we did find is that these vents are completely different to those seen anywhere else – the animals existing at these vents are almost all new to science,” he said. The findings were published on Tuesday in the journal PLoS Biology.
“What we didn’t find is almost as surprising as what we did,” said Rogers. “Many animals such as tubeworms, vent mussels, vent crabs, and vent shrimps, which are found in hydrothermal vents in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, simply weren’t there.”
Last week, scientists at the University of Southampton announced the discovery of new creatures in the so-called “Dragon Vent” in the south-west Indian Ocean.
Dr Jon Copley, a marine biologist at the University of Southampton who led the exploration of the Dragon Vent and is also an author on the latest PLoS Biology research paper, said that exploration of the world’s deep-sea vents was a race against time.
“The exploitation of the deep ocean is overtaking its exploration. We’re fishing in deeper and deeper waters, oil and gas is moving into deeper waters and now there’s mining starting to take place in deep waters. We need to understand how species disperse and evolve in the deep oceans if we’re going to make responsible decisions about managing their resources.”
Rogers added that the vents revealed much about how deep water communities have evolved, and how they are distributed across the world’s oceans. “In the space of a single eight-week cruise, we’ve changed our level of understanding of these systems completely. We’ve changed our ideas about how vent systems are distributed and the factors that may influence that distribution. What that tells us is that our level of knowledge of the deep sea in general is extremely poor indeed.”
He added that hydrothermal vents had already changed the way scientists thought about how life exists on earth. “They told scientists that life could exist in the absence of sunlight – you could have food webs based on mechanical energy. They were also informative about the extreme conditions under which life could exist, they told us about where else in the universe life may occur. Hydrothermal vent biology has stimulated a whole new science of astrobiology.”
Endangered Gray Wolf Wanders into California
SISKIYOU COUNTY, Calif. (KTLA) — Wildlife biologists say a gray wolf that was wandering in southern Oregon has crossed into California.
Officials say the animal is a 2-1/2 year old male formerly from a pack in northeast Oregon.
The wolf, designated OR7, is collared with a Global Positioning System (GPS) device that periodically transmits its location. Biologists have been documenting its travels since February 2011.
Based on the GPS data, the wolf is now more than 300 miles from where his journey began.
Thursday, the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) learned that OR7 crossed the state line into northern Siskiyou County on Wednesday. Tracking data puts his most recent location as a few miles south of the Oregon border.
Wildlife officials say it’s not possible to predict where the wolf will go next; he could return to Oregon.
In California, the gray wolf is protected as endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act.
“Whether one is for it or against it, the entry of this lone wolf into California is an historic event and result of much work by the wildlife agencies in the West,” said DFG Director Charlton H. Bonham. “If the gray wolf does establish a population in California, there will be much more work to do here.”
The last confirmed wild gray wolf in California was killed in Lassen County in 1924.
Application of Endangered Species Act in Alaska a cause for concern?
For nearly 40 years, at-risk animals in the United States have taken refuge in the force of federal law. Under the Endangered Species Act, passed into law on Dec. 28, 1973, protection of animals facing severe decline became a federal mandate.
While some Alaska species have recovered through protection, others were hunted to extinction before laws existed to safeguard them. Species that are gone forever include the Spectacled Cormorant and the Steller Sea Cow, a large marine mammal similar to manatees.
On Wednesday the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Alaska region celebrated the act’s anniversary with a brief “Happy Birthday!” message on its website, and credited the law with the successful recovery of a handful of animals in Alaska.
But nearly four decades after the act became law it’s become a source of ongoing and sometimes escalating tensions between the state of Alaska and federal regulators.
De-listing species is something Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell likes to see. Regulating more animals under the Endangered Species Act isn’t. He’s distrustful of the process and has long questioned whether animals up for review truly meet the criteria. “It’s easier to prevent a problem than to correct it. To this end we’re manning the watchtower and looking for risks of unwarranted attempts to bring a species under the ESA regulatory umbrella,” he said in a November speech to the Resource Development Council.
Parnell isn’t so much against protecting needy species as much as he is against federal oversight, which Parnell sees as an obstacle to resource development. He wants the state to be more proactive in developing and carrying out its own plans to help imperiled animals rebound. “If we adopt our own appropriate protective measures, we are less likely to see ESA-based mandates. So we incorporate protections of species and habitats into our state permits and licenses, notably in oil and gas exploration and development activities,” he told attendees at the development council’s November meeting.
When Parnell disagrees with federal actions, he’s turned to the courts to try to block them, as with habitat for beluga whales in Cook Inlet and polar bears in the Arctic. In April, when critical habitat was designated in Cook Inlet, Parnell accused the federal government of “locking up Alaska land from development,” adding that the federal decisions to list the beluga whales and provide them with habitat protections “destroy jobs and opportunities for economic development.”
Testifying before Congress in October, Douglas Vincent-Lang, a special assistant to the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, called the act “well intentioned” but expressed concern that recent applications of it were based soley on “speculated risks.” Speaking to the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology, Vincent-Lang reinforced the state’s disappointment in federal decision makers who based listing decisions on future projected declines instead of current population numbers, the most notable of which is the polar bear. “There is little evidence that polar bears are threatened with extinction now or within the near term foreseeable future,” he said.
In particular, Vincent-Lang disagrees with the methodology that predicts population declines based on climate change. In the case of polar bears, projected sea ice loss also led to the designation of a vast region in Alaska’s arctic as critical habitat, the same region under which sits one of the largest potential oil and gas deposits in the United States. Increasingly, he said, there is concern that the act is being used as a land management tool instead of one that seeks to promote species recovery.
“Ultimately, what species could not be listed due to future threats such as climate change,” he asked the committee.
In addition to the polar bear decision, Vincent-Lang noted disagreement with management decisions on the Cook Inlet beluga whale, Steller sea lions, and northern sea otters. For all of these, scientific data amassed by the state shows species stability that was overlooked in the federal decisions, he said, urging Congress to consider legislative reforms.
Yet for all of the legal wrangling that goes on, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages several species protected by the endangered species act, sees more good than bad in the act.
“Here in Alaska, the act has contributed to the recovery of the Aleutian cackling goose, the American peregrine falcon, and the Arctic peregrine falcon,” said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the agency’s office in Anchorage. “Nationally it has recovered a number of species and, more important, saved many more from extinction. Species don’t reach the point at which they need the protection overnight, and so recovering a species can be a long and difficult process. But the act works, and America, and the world, would be poorer today without it.”
Fourteen species, including one plant, in Alaska are currently listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. They are: Aleutian Shield Fern, Blue Whale, Bowhead Whale, Cook Inlet Beluga Whale, Eskimo Curlew, Fin Whale, Humpback Whale, Leatherback Sea Turtle, North Pacific Right Whale, Sei Whale, Short-tailed Albatross, Sperm Whale, Steller Sea Lion, and the Wood Bison.
Eight species are listed as threatened under the act. They are: Green Sea Turtle, Loggerhead Sea Turtle, Northern Sea Otter, Olive Ridley Sea Turtle, Polar Bear, Spectacled Eider, Steller Sea Lion, and the Steller’s Eider.
Those under review for listing include the olive-sided flycatcher, Kittlitz’s Murrelet, Yellow-billed Loon, Pacific Walrus, Queen Charlotte Goshawk, Bearded Seal, Black-footed Albatross, Pacific Herring, and the Ringed Seal.
Species listed on the Endangered Species Act are protected against sport and commercial hunting and development or other federal activities that might harm them or the places they live.
In discussing the rapid decline and ultimate extinction of the Spectacled Cormorant, hunted for food and feathers, and the Steller’s Sea Cow, hunted for food and its skin (which was used to make boats), the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has said the plight of these animals shows how important the endangered species act is. “Without the steadfast commitment to species protection embodied in the act and aggressive protection programs, entire species can disappear when the needs of people come face to face with the needs of individual species,” Fish and Game says on its website.
(NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect the full list of endangered, threatened and other at-risk species identified by both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.)
Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com
Zoo Helping Re-Populate 17 Endangered Species
SIOUX FALLS, SD -
The Great Plains Zoo has been a family-friendly attraction for many years in Sioux Falls. But there’s much more going on behind the scenes than daily feeding and cleaning up.
Three tiger cubs, a black rhino, and now two zebra foals have all been recently born at the zoo. While they may be cute, they’re all on the endangered species list. They’re part of a breeding program the zoo has to help re-populate animals that aren’t doing so well in the wild.
“The Great Plains Zoo, here in Sioux Falls, participates with zoos across the country and world to help save 17 endangered species,” Great Plains Zoo President and CEO Elizabeth Whealy said.
Whealy says some of the animals in the program are some pretty-high profile species.
“We have the deeply endangered Eastern Black Rhinoceros, we have Siamang Gibbon, penguins, Amur Tigers, snow leopards, lots of amazing animals that we’re working to breed right here at the Great Plains Zoo,” Whealy said.
The most recent addition is two Grevy Zebras, which are also on the endangered species list.
“Scientists believe there’s less than 3,000 Grevy Zebras left in the wild. These are very exciting and important births, not only for the zoo but the community of Sioux Falls, but more importantly for the whole zoo community, that Grevy population in general,” Allison Douglas, who works with the zebras, said.
Douglas says there are only about 200 of them currently in North American zoos.
For all of the animals, it’s much more than putting together a male and female and hoping for the best.
“Zebras are set up genetically, paired up to breed, in order to increase gene diversity in the Grevy’s population,” Douglas
“This is a highly-selective dating service. Geneticists and biologist in the zoo community look at the very best pairings throughout the population at that given time and make recommendations for breeding based on that,” Whealy said.
And of course, it’s a program that’s meant to help much more than the Great Plains Zoo.
“It’s great knowing that our local community can make a difference in North America population as well as the world,” Douglas said.
Here is the list of the endangered species in the breeding program:
• Humboldt Penguin
• Yellow-Footed Rock Wallaby
• White-Winged Wood Duck
• Swift Fox
• Red Panda
• Giant Anteater
• Panamanian Golden Frog
• Grevy’s Zebra
• Cheetah
• Eastern Bongo Antelope
• Eastern Black Rhinoceros
• Amur Tiger
• Snow Leopard
• Red Wolf
• Siamang Gibbon
• Black and White Colobus Monkey
• Ring-Tailed Lemur
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