Species Focus Area
Species elsewhere face pressures we recognize: habitat loss, exploitation, pollution, and neglect. Learning them builds understanding rather than distance.
Global species show how trade, consumption, and demand in one country decide the survival of wildlife in another.
Common threats
How people can help
These ten are not a scientific ranking. They were selected for conservation urgency, teaching value, and regional relevance, and each one has a complete, sourced profile.
Critically Endangered (IUCN)
Manis javanica
A scaled, ant-eating mammal of Southeast Asia driven toward extinction by the most intense illegal wildlife trade of any mammal group.
Critically Endangered (IUCN)
Manis pentadactyla
A scaled, ant-eating mammal from southern Asia, trafficked in such volume that it has been functionally lost across much of its historic range.
Vulnerable (IUCN)
Smutsia temminckii
Africa's most widespread pangolin, increasingly targeted by international trafficking as Asian pangolin populations collapse.
Critically Endangered (IUCN, subspecies)
Panthera pardus orientalis
A cold-adapted leopard of the Russian Far East and northeast China, reduced to a single small population and now slowly increasing under strict protection.
Critically Endangered (IUCN)
Rhinoceros sondaicus
The rarest large mammal on earth, surviving as a single population in one Indonesian national park.
Endangered (IUCN)
Gorilla beringei beringei
One of the few great apes whose numbers are increasing, recovering from near-extinction through decades of protection built around tourism and community partnership.
Critically Endangered (IUCN)
Pongo abelii
A critically endangered great ape confined to northern Sumatra, losing habitat to oil palm expansion, logging, and road development.
Critically Endangered (IUCN)
Loxodonta cyclotis
Recognized as a distinct species in 2021 and immediately assessed as Critically Endangered after decades of ivory poaching in Central African forests.
Critically Endangered (IUCN)
Phocoena sinus
The world's most endangered marine mammal, reduced to about ten individuals by gillnets set for a different endangered species.
Critically Endangered (IUCN), possibly extinct in the wild
Atelopus zeteki
Panama's national symbol, possibly extinct in the wild since the late 2000s and surviving in a network of captive assurance colonies.