10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye

Global warming is making it bad for our favorite artic animals like the ‘big and fuzzy’ polar bear or the penguins that can walk and be crazily cute, but here are ten species are even worse off than the artic animals:

· California Condor

· Sumatran Orangutan

· Ganges Shark

· Mountain Gorilla

· Philippine Crocodile

· Black-Footed Ferret

· Siberian Tiger

· Red Wolf

· Western Gray Whale

· Sumatran Rhinoceros

These animals all belong on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List is a list of critically endangered animals that face an extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future, and they may not live to see the end of the next decade without a similar effort of human intervention that brought them to the brink in the first place.

California Condor

The carrion-eating California Condor is a resident of the Grand Canyon area and the western coastal mountains of California. They should live a long life; their life span is about fifty years which makes then the world’s longest-living birds. However, because of poaching, lead poisoning, and habitat loss that are caused by humans, they have become the world’s rarest bird species— they were almost completely wiped out in the 1980s. Now, there are now 332 condors that are known to exist, including 152 in the wild.

Sumatran Orangutan

Habitat loss and poaching has pushed the Sumatran Orangutan to extinction. The fruit and insect loving Sumatran Orangutan can live roughly for 45 years in the wild, but they breed a lot more slowly than other primates; a single female can only produce a maximum of three offspring in her lifetime. So if the death rate is higher than the birth rate, you got yourself one species that needs help fast.

Ganges Shark

India’s Ganges River’s rare species of shark, the Ganges Shark, is known for being a man-eater, and in other words, dangerous but highly valuable. The sharks are sought after for its oil, however, that’s not the only reason for their placement on the IUCN’s Red List of endangered species. Rampant fishing, habitat degradation from pollution, and increasing river utilization are the primary causes for its rapid disappearance.

Mountain Gorilla

The Mountain Gorilla’s population has decreased rapidly by deforestation, hunting, and the illegal pet trade, and now only a mere 720 remain in the wild although they have managed to elude discovery until as late as 1902.

Philippine Crocodile

Although it is legally protected in its native country, the islands from which it derives its name, the Philippine Crocodile continues to face threats from human disturbance like habitat loss and accidental death by dynamite fishing. A survey from 1995 found that only 100 adult crocs are left in the wild, making the animal a severely threatened species on the planet.

Black-Footed Ferret

Native to North America, the Black-Footed Ferret is one of the most endangered mammals on the continent, and they teeter on the edge of extinction because of human development has reduced their grassland habitat to less than two percent of its original size. Also, since prairie-dogs cover most of a ferret’s diet, about 90 percent, the destruction of the prairie-dogs’ colonies due to habitat destruction, pest-elimination programs, and disease are huge contributors to the ferret’s disappearance.

Siberian Tiger

The Siberian Tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, used to live in northeastern China, the Korean Peninsula, and Mongolia, but now is confined to Russia’s Amur-Ussuri region where it is protected. It is estimated that about 350 to 450 tigers still live although they still face dangers like habitat loss through logging and development as well as poaching for their fur and bones.

Red Wolf

The Red Wolf managed to survive the Late Pleistocene ice age but may not be able to survive extinction in the modern age. The red wolf used to populate throughout the southeastern US, but now are so devastated by predator-control programs and habitat loss that the lack of breeding partners has led many of them to mate with coyotes instead which reduces the number of genetically pure wolves. About 100 still live in northeastern North Carolina today, while another 150 roam at captive breeding facilities across the US.

Western Gray Whale

The population of Western Gray Whales has never recovered from unchecked whaling in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries even though the International Whaling Commission banned the hunt of gray whales in 1947. While there are about 100 western grays that still live, only 23 are reproductive females, and their only known feeding ground off the northeastern coast of Sakhalin Island in Russia has been annexed by oil companies whose exploration and mining activities like high-intensity seismic surveying, drilling operations, increased ship and air traffic, and oil spills are driving the mammals to extinction.

Sumatran Rhinoceros

Used to flourish through the rainforests, cloud forests, and swamps of India and Southeast Asia, the smallest of rhinoceroses, the Sumatran Rhinoceros, are now critically endangered. Illegal poaching, the rampant destruction of their habitat in the name, and the little success that zoos have made for the rhinos to breed are the main culprits for their dwindling numbers.

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10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye