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The Pinta Island Tortoise

Scientific classification: Chelonoidis abingdonii

Location: Ecuador

Lonesome George was seemingly the last of his kind, a member of the Pinta Island subspecies of giant tortoises in the Galapagos. When George died, the subspecies seemed to die off. But there’s an asterix to this story. Galapagos tortoises were frequently kept on ships for food (imagine livestock that doesn’t need daily feeding) but sometimes dumped off when no longer needed. Isabella Island was a popular dumping ground for tortoises across the various subspecies.

An expedition to the island in 2007 found something intriguing. Eight young tortoises seemed to be first generation hybrids of Pinta Island tortoises and another subspecies. With 2,000 tortoises living on the island, that means a Pinta Island tortoise is likely hiding somewhere on the island. So far, a total of 17 hybrids have been found and future expeditions could yield more, and maybe even find the parent of those hybrid reptiles.

PHOTO: Rodrigo Buendia/AFP

Brazilian Spix's Macaw

Scientific classification: Cyanopsitta spixii

Location: Brazil

The Spix’s macaw is still alive today—but only in zoos. There have been a few reported sightings of the colorful bird, but they’re few and far between. Their primary habitat, the Caraiba tree, has largely been deforested, leaving the macaws vulnerable. A few attempts to set up nature preserves near their original nesting sites are ongoing in the case that the wild macaw reports are true.

Meanwhile, around 100 exist in zoos and other preserves, and there may be a few more kept as pets. Attempts to breed more have faltered due to many of the captive birds being closely related, leading to an uptick in inbreeding, leading to inviable offspring.

PHOTO: Rüdiger Stehn

Scimitar Oryx

Scientific classification: Oryx dammah

Location: North Africa (now in captivity in Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal and the U.S.)

The scimitar oryx — a relative to the antelope — had a tough go of it when the Sahara’s northern areas rapidly desertified, leaving only a southern population alive. But when European trophy hunters came in, their population rapidly declined. The oryx is prized for its long antler. By 2000, they were extinct in the wild.

But the oryx was kept as livestock, leaving some individuals there. Captive breeding programs have rebounded their population in a few places worldwide, including Texas Hill Country, where most individuals survive today. Some of these captive populations have been reintroduced into the wild but it’s not yet known if this has created a sustainable population or not.

PHOTO: Mohamed El-Shahed

Socorro Isopod

Scientific classification: Thermosphaeroma thermophilum

Location: U.S.

Isopods are ancient, primitive crustaceans. Though the larger family, the Sphaeromatidae, are plentiful worldwide, the Thermosphaeroma genus is located exclusively in the southwest United States and Mexico in hot springs areas. There are eight species in the genus. One is relatively healthy. Five are critically endangered, while one’s population isn’t known.

But the Socorro Isopod is perhaps the strangest — and saddest — case. They’re nearly wiped off the face of the Earth, clinging on for dear life in a single pool.

In the 1940s, water from the Sedillo Spring was diverted to serve the population of Socorro, New Mexico. But in the process, the Socorro Isopod lost its native habitat. They were swept into two concrete pools and a water pipe, where they held on until 1988 when a tree root cut off the water supply. Since then, they’ve been tended to by various zoos and wildlife agencies with the hopes of saving the population and returning them to the wild.

PHOTO: Bronwyn H. Bleakley

Salt Creek Tiger Beetle

Scientific classification: Cicindela nevadica lincolniana

Location: U.S.

But its population has drastically declined as the area around the marshes and its tributaries have urbanized. Today, it numbers around 400 individuals, and that represents a population rebound. This has largely happened through water diversion projects and turning parts of their habitat into protected lands.

PHOTO: Bradley A. Miles/USFWS

Amur Leopard

Scientific classification: Panthera pardus orientalis

Location: Russia, China

The Amur Leopard is barely holding on in Russia and China. In a decade, their population has risen to 100 from a population of just two dozen wild individual cats. A list of hazards stand in the way of their future — poaching, deforestation, inbreeding and industrial encroachment — but concerted efforts to save them have made some progress.

They have also been successfully bred in captivity, though any eventual reintroduction poses problems for predators unused to life in the wild. They remain the largest big cat species in the world.

PHOTO: Yuri Smityuk

Black Rhino

Scientific classification: Diceros bicornis

Location: Eastern and Southern Africa

Bit by bit, the black rhino is disappearing from the world. Most recently, the western black rhino was declared extinct in 2011. Only one subspecies — the south-western black rhinoceros — is managing to hold on beyond the threat of being considered endangered. The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers it “near threatened.”

The entire wider species has fallen in population by 96 percent in just the last 60 years. Poaching represents one of the biggest threats to the survival of the rhino, as its horn is used in traditional folk medicine in China. Only 5,500 rhinos remain on the African continent, though there are concerted efforts to boost those numbers.

PHOTO: Stefan Heunis

Northern White Rhino

Scientific classification: Ceratotherium simum cottoni

Location: Kenya

While the white rhino is faring overall better than its relative, the black rhino, the northern population is virtually gone. Two women of the subspecies survive in captivity, while the last remaining male died just this year. Scientists may take a Jurassic Park approach to bringing the subspecies back. While the male rhinos may be dead, their genetic material is still preserved in labs.

The recently reported on efforts that are underway to possibly clone or otherwise re-engineer the rhino. Essentially, the DNA samples that remain of the rhino are genetically varied enough that it could, eventually, create a stable breeding population to bring the subspecies back from the brink, though it would likely remain captively bred for decades while its former native range changes in its absence.

PHOTO: Tony Karumba

Javan Rhino

Scientific classification: Rhinoceros sondaicus

Location: Indonesia

While rhinos are more associated with the African continent, there are Asian species in the rhino family. The Indian rhino could be faring better — it’s considered near threatened — but is outright thriving compared to the Javan rhino, confined to the island of Java after hunting and deforestation drove it from the rest of southeast Asia. The Vietnam War also severely drove down the population of the rhino as its habitat was destroyed.

Today, only 60 Javan rhinos survive in a wildlife preserve at the very western tip of Java. Disease and inbreeding may still drive this small population to extinction, despite extensive efforts to save it. A few remaining populations off of Java have been spotted over the years, but they are few and far between and one of these populations was driven to extinction in Vietnam in 2010, leading to few options to introduce new rhinos to the breeding stock. The Javan rhino is not closely related to the five other rhino species, save the Indian rhino.

PHOTO: Mary Plage

Sumatran Rhino

Scientific classification: Dicerorhinus sumatrensis

Location: Indonesia, Malaysia

There are five species of rhino left on Earth — and as mentioned, only one of them is faring well comparatively to the others. While not nearly as endangered as the Javan Rhino, the Sumatran Rhino exists in a few pockets across Indonesia, and there are maybe 100 left in the wild across one peninsula and two different islands. Because they are isolated into pockets, it may be hard to find other rhinos to mate with.

There are two extant subspecies — the eastern and western. The eastern is the smallest known rhino and the most endangered, with only 15 surviving in the wild in Borneo. The subspecies was even once declared extinct in the wild until a juvenile female was found in 2016, giving some hope that populations, however small, continue to exist. There are plans to build a preserve for them at the Kelian Protected Forest, but with so few left, every rhino counts.

PHOTO: Kelvinyam

Tapanuli Orangutan

Scientific classification: Pongo tapanuliensis

Location: Indonesia

The orangutan, along with humans, gorillas and chimpanzees, are members of the great ape family. The orangutans are the only Asian great ape and are a bit more distantly related to us than the gorilla or our very close cousins, the chimps and bonobos. All three species of orangutans — the Sumatran, the Bornean and the recently discovered Tapanuli — are critically endangered with around 60,000 surviving across all three species.

The Tapanuli is perhaps the most endangered estimated to only have around 800 individuals surviving in the wild. The Sumatran, which lives near the Tapanuli but is only distantly related, only has around 6,600 individuals remaining. The Bornean orangutan — oddly more closely related to the more geographically distant Tapanuli— has a modestly more robust population, though it’s only around 54,000 individuals across four subspecies.

There are ongoing efforts to save our intelligent cousin species, but poaching and deforestation stand largely in the way.

PHOTO: Tim Laman

Cross River Gorilla

Scientific classification: Gorilla gorilla diehli

Location: Nigeria

Gorillas are faring only slightly better than their Asian cousins. There are two species of gorilla — the Eastern and Western, populations separated by thousands of miles. But both are on the brink of extinction due to poaching, the pet trade, Ebola, deforestation and human warfare.

The western gorilla is divided into subspecies, the western lowland gorilla and the Cross River gorilla. The western lowland has around 95,000 individuals — barely the population of Yuma, Arizona — while less than 300 Cross River gorillas remain. The eastern gorilla is even more in peril, with 3,800 eastern lowland gorillas and 880 mountain gorillas surviving.

Like the orangutan, the four gorilla subspecies are vastly intelligent species. Most gorillas held in captivity come from the western population. But even captive gorillas are facing big, big problems, as plague gorillas in zoos.

PHOTO: Julielangford

Western Chimpanzee

Scientific classification: Pan troglodytes verus

Location: Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea

The chimpanzee species — comprising the common chimp and the less territorial bonobo — are the closest living relatives to humans, our lasting common ancestor having lived around 12 million years ago. Both chimp species are standing on the brink of extinction.

The common chimpanzee comprises four (possibly five) subspecies with around 300,000 individuals across a wide range in Africa. The western chimpanzee is the closest to the brink, with only a few thousand individuals surviving. The bulk of the remaining individuals are the central chimpanzee, comprising somewhere between 70,000 and 115,000 chimps, though estimates vary widely. Like the gorilla, habitat encroachment, poaching, hunting and disease threaten the individuals.

PHOTO: Anup Shah

Malayan Tiger

Scientific classification: Panthera tigris tigris

Location: Malaysia

In a few forested areas of Malaysia and a small chunk of Thailand, between 250-340 Malayan tigers stalk their prey. They’re a subspecies of the Indochinese tiger, which isn’t doing so hot either. Poaching for meat and traditional medicine persists and its habitat is being lost to development.

While there is a captive population of the Malayan tigers, all 54 are descended from just 11 tigers, making them too closely related to sustain a wild population. Not much is known about the behavior of the tigers. This makes conservation efforts that much harder, meaning the Malayan tiger could remain in permanent danger.

PHOTO: Michal Cizek

Hawksbill Sea Turtle

Scientific classification: Eretmochelys imbricata

Location: Worldwide

All sea turtles are threatened with extinction, but the Hawksbill Sea Turtle is the closest to the brink, followed by its cousin, the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle.

The Hawksbill grows slowly and breeds rarely, which, coupled with human hunting, has driven the species to the brink. Only 15,000 egg-laying capable females remain distributed in a wide ranging area mostly across the southern hemisphere. The turtles are still, today, exploited for food and trinkets, putting wild populations continually in danger.

PHOTO: Prisma by Dukas

Red Crowned Roofed Turtle

Scientific classification: Batagur kachuga

Location: India

Natural to southeast Asia, this river turtle has been driven from areas like Nepal and Bangaledsh through and . They've also drowned in illegal fishing nets and irregular water flow from dams have killed them. Now they find themselves limited, scientists believe, to a single river in India, the Chambal. The that there are only 500 left with a population decreasing. That's enough to list them as critically endangered.

PHOTO: Saurav Gawan

Sumatran Elephant

Scientific classification: Elephas maximus sumatranus

Location: Indonesia

The Elephantidae family once roamed throughout the world, even into North America. But now, only two populations survive, one in Africa and one in Asia. The African elephants consist of two species, the bush and forest elephants. The forest elephants are facing grave danger due to deforestation, which could see them wiped out within a decade. The bush elephant is faring somewhat better but still faces persistent problems with habitat encroachment and poaching.

The Asian elephant, which is distantly related to the African elephant, is in even graver danger. There are 700,000 African elephants left in the world, but only 40,000 Asian elephants across three subspecies. The bulk of the surviving Asian elephants are the Indian subspecies, while the Sri Lankan subspecies has only around 6,000 elephants still alive and that’s after concerted conservation efforts.

Of gravest concern is the Sumatran elephant, with less than 2,800 spread out across several pockets in the country. Some have been poached, while others get caught up in traps meant to keep foraging animals out of palm oil plantations.

PHOTO: Barcroft Media

Sumatran Tiger

Scientific classification: Panthera tigris sondaica

Location: Indonesia

The Sumatran tiger is the last of the Sunda Island tigers, a group of Indonesian tigers. The other two — the Bali tiger and the Javan tiger — went extinct in the 20th century. Now, the Sumatran tiger has less than 700 individuals left in the wild. Deforestation remains one of the biggest issues for the tiger, who prefer unkempt wilderness to even modestly developed areas.

Agricultural development for palm oil and acacia remain two of the biggest issues facing the rare tiger, as does hunting — those individuals who do venture into more open areas are likely to be targeted by poachers. Lax enforcement of conservation efforts has sustained such poaching practices. While some efforts are underway to bolster the population, it still may disappear in the coming decades.

PHOTO: Brendon Thorne

Saola

Scientific classification: Pseudoryx nghetinhensis

Location: Vietnam, Laos

In 1992, the saola, an unusual cattle relative, was discovered in Vietnam. Not much about their population is known, but it was quickly realized they were in danger. Despite being related to livestock animals, it deals with captivity poorly, surviving for a scant few months.

The saola tends to avoid humans, but humans are creeping on its strip of habitat through the Annamite Range of mountains. It’s a solitary creature for the most part, meaning that if it gets cut off from its range, an individual may not have the chance to breed with other saolas. While humans gather more information about the saola, we may be reckoning with watching a species disappear before we even had the chance to understand it.

PHOTO: WWF

Vaquita

Scientific classification: Phocoena sinus

Location: Gulf of California

The Gulf of California is home to one of the rarest aquatic mammals in the world. The vaquita is a small porpoise whose population is in drastic decline. While there were 600 alive in 1997, there are only 12 left today. The vaquita is a small mammal, smaller than humans, and easily gets caught up in fishing nets. The practice of gillnetting for larger fish has swept over the vaquita population, leaving only those dozen remaining members of the species.

The vaquita doesn’t handle captivity well — one female died within hours of capture. This means that the remaining population could be gone soon, becoming one of the few cetaceans to go extinct in our lifetime, next to the baiji, a species of freshwater dolphin once found in China.

PHOTO: Paul Olsen/NOAA

Yangtze Finless Porpoise

Scientific classification: Neophocaena asiaeorientalis

Location: China

While the finless porpoise is considered merely threatened in its habitat across Pacific and Indian ocean coastal waters, the Yangtze River population is in rapid decline. There were just 1,800 reported 10 years ago, and the population may be as low as 500 now.

Widescale infrastructure projects on the river and industrial pollutants have affected the ecosystem of the river downstream, which, combined with bycatch fishing and boating activities, drove the aforementioned baiji to extinction. The pollution of the Yangtze also contributes vastly to pollution in the ocean. An alligator species that lives in the river is in precipitous decline as well, with only 120 left. The problems facing the Yangtze are, in other words, not just isolated to one species, but to the entire ecosystem, and ecosystems that live downstream of the river.

PHOTO: China Photos

Precious Steam-Toad

Scientific classification: Ansonia smeagol

Location: Malaysia

Named after the ring hunting Gollum from "Lord of The Rings," the Precious Steam-Toad is a mysterious little toad. It was only discovered in 2016 in the Titiwangsa Mountains, which spread through both Malaysia and Thailand. It’s possible humans only know about the tiny amphibian, at maximum, only because climate change forced them upland from the forest.

They can be found around an hour’s drive from Kuala Lampur, as far as scientists know only on a single mountain. However, the continued expansion of a nearby gambling resort and entertainment complex known as Genting Highlands, which already consists of 7 hotels, and other developments in the region threaten the Toad’s environments and the water quality of nearby streams to the extent that the IUCN .

PHOTO: IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group 2018

Vancouver Island Marmot

Scientific classification: Marmota vancouverensis

Location: Canada

Native to the southwestern Canadian island from which they get their name, these marmots live in small colonies consisting of 3 to 5 animals. They’re prime examples of how small animals can contribute to and build ecosystems. While the marmots spend much of their time burrowing underground to stave off predators, as herbivores they act as seed dispersers and pollinators for the island’s plants and grasses. Their complex burrow systems are used by other animals as well, providing homes to insects and smaller mammals.

While they’re great at building ecosystems, the burrows are terrible as defense mechanisms. Vancouver Island marmots have devastatingly terrible predation rates. A shocking 83 percent of their yearly deaths come from predators like wolves, cougars and golden eagles. These rates are increased through logging, which gives the animals fewer places to hide. Although populations are hard to detect, the IUCN estimates that .

Add in long-term environmental pressures expected to occur through climate change, which scientists believe will radically reshape British Columbia to , creates a grim picture.

PHOTO: Marmot Recovery Foundation