Working together, we can leave our children a living planet.




Endangered Species List:

By the year 2025, Earth could lose as many as one fifth of all species known to exist today. In recent centuries, hundreds of species have disappeared, almost always as a result of human activities. The passenger pigeon, one familiar example, was a source of food until excessive hunting and habitat loss caused its extinction in 1914. The North American bison, whose populations were decimated by settlers and market hunters in the 1800s, came close to sharing the same fate. Bison survive today only because of the efforts of early conservationists.

Today, species require such efforts more urgently than ever. An essential task that falls to present-day conservationists is to determine which species are most endangered, so that conservation resources can be applied where action is needed most. Species are categorized by the degree to which their survival in the wild is threatened. Here, World Wildlife Fund offers a sampling of animals and plants that fall mainly within the two most serious categories of threat: critically endangered and endangered.

What threatens these species' existence? Some of the top threats are habitat destruction by unsustainable logging and ever-encroaching human settlement; pollution of water, soil, and air by toxic chemicals; unnatural climate changes due to fossil fuel use; unmanaged fishing that exhausts fish stocks; and illegal hunting to supply the demand for skins, hides, traditional medicines, food, and tourist souvenirs.

This list presents only a fraction of the species at risk of extinction today and does not include tens of thousands of species whose status we do not yet know. Hundreds of species without common names have been left out, which means that while many mammals are on this list, only a few insects and molluscs are included.

Species listed here range from the largest animal on Earth, the blue whale, to the majestic tiger, to the humble thickshell pondsnail. Large or small, beautiful or ugly, all species play a role in the complex web of life. All of us depend on the natural resources of our planet. Each time a species is lost, the complexity, natural balance, and beauty of our world is diminished. And what threatens plants and animals ultimately threatens people as well.

Known worldwide by its panda logo, World Wildlife Fund is dedicated to protecting the world's wildlife and the rich biological diversity that we all need to survive. WWF is the leading privately supported international conservation organization in the world, and has sponsored more than 2,000 projects in 116 countries. With more than 1 million members in the United States alone, contributions from our members help protect endangered species and their habitats.



Click here for a printable list of the world's endangered species.