Talk:Endangered species/List of representative species

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[edit] Representative endangered species

The following lists are examples of endangered species. These lists contain a small fraction of the known endangered species, and contain only a minuscule fraction of the total endangered species (known and unknown). The number of species becoming extinct each year is many times as large as the number of species actually classified as endangered. The gap between species classified as endangered and the species that are endangered but not classified arises for reasons such as:

  • the extensive and slow review process for listing new species as endangered
  • the varying standards for regarding a species as endangered
  • the voluminous number of yearly extinctions, often for species about which little or no documentation exists

The lists in this section should not be regarded as comprehensive.

[edit] Endangered mammals

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The endangered Island Fox
The endangered Island Fox

The following list is a very small fraction of known endangered mammals:

The endangered Sea Otter
The endangered Sea Otter
American bison skull heap. There were as few as 750 bison in 1890 from overhunting.
American bison skull heap. There were as few as 750 bison in 1890 from overhunting.

[edit] Endangered birds

Immature California Condor
Immature California Condor

[edit] Endangered reptiles

Loggerhead Sea Turtle
Loggerhead Sea Turtle

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[edit] Endangered amphibians

Santa Cruz Long-toed Salamander (photo courtesy of Don Roberson)
Santa Cruz Long-toed Salamander (photo courtesy of Don Roberson)

[edit] Endangered fish

An Asian arowana
An Asian arowana

[edit] Endangered arthropods

Main article: Endangered arthropod

The IUCN has found that 53 percent of all arthropods that have been evaluated are designated as endangered or threatened.[1] (The IUCN does not disaggregate endangered from critically endangered or threatened for the purpose of these statistics.) Given that estimates of the number of arthropod species ranges upwards of 10,000,000, there may be in the neighbourhood of 5,000,000 arthropod species which are either endangered or threatened, most of which have not yet been fully described, let alone evaluated. The following is a very small fraction then of the known endangered artropods:

[edit] Endangered molluscs

[edit] Endangered plants

About 6% of the 300,000 identified species are endangered due to overcollection or destruction of habitat, among other causes. Pollinator decline is also a factor for some species. The following is a very small fraction of the endangered plants:


[edit] Endangered fungi

The IUCN lists only 3 fungi species, all of which are endangered or critically endangered.

  • Boreal Felt Lichen (Erioderma pedicellatum)
  • Pleurotus nebrodensis
  • Reindeer Lichen Cladonia perforata