15 Most Endangered Animals Africa – From eels and sturgeons to pangolins and turtles, hundreds of species are threatened by human hunger or greed. Here are some of the riskiest
If there’s one food that has become a symbol of people’s willingness to eat other animals that don’t exist, it’s Ortolan oatmeal. Traditionally, this little songbird, prized since Roman times, is eaten whole, in one bite, with its head hidden under a napkin, to hide its shame from God (although this “delicacy”, drenched in Armagnac and deep-fried, is downright dirty ).
15 Most Endangered Animals Africa
In France, where ortolan hunting has been banned since 1999, according to the RSPB, 30,000 birds are still taken each year; each is expected to cost up to €150 (£130). Despite conservation efforts, the ortolan population declined by 84% between 1980 and 2012.
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However, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the ortolan as a “species of least concern”. According to Professor David Macdonald of the University of Oxford, who reported in 2016 that just 301 land mammal species are at risk of extinction due to our cooking habits, there are many animals that are at much greater risk.
Here are the 10 most endangered creatures, based on Macdonald’s research, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) guidelines, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) Threatened Species Conservation Programme.
The world’s largest population of amphibians, once found in central, southwestern and southern China, has declined by 80% since 1960, says ZSL’s Olivia Kuchman. Despite being listed as an Appendix I site (the highest level of protection afforded by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), the specimens are said to be on the black market, where they are prized as a delicacy and for their medicinal properties. In 2015, the Washington Post reported that undercover reporters for a Chinese newspaper caught 14 police officers feasting on salamanders during a banquet at a seafood restaurant in Shenzhen.
These ancient, enormous fish (they can weigh up to a ton and a half) were once found all the way from central Russia to Italy and northern Iran, but overfishing for their meat and roe and the devastating effects of modern river infrastructure on their migratory spawning patterns have reduced their area on only two rivers, the Ural and the Danube, and the basins into which they flow, the Caspian and the Black Sea.
According to MCS’s Jean-Luc Solandt, it’s “definitely something that could die out in a generation.” With beluga roe worth thousands of pounds per kilo, it’s easy to see why overexploitation remains a problem. And this is not the only sturgeon in trouble: of the 27 species, the IUCN lists 15 others in the same category as threatened.
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Since 2000, it is estimated that more than one million pangolins, the world’s most traded wild mammals, have been killed for their meat and blood, as well as their scales (used in traditional Chinese medicine). When all eight pangolin species were listed on Appendix I in 2016, everyone at the Cites convention was said to be applauding.
However, as Oxford University’s Dan Challenger points out, alarming seizures are still happening: 8.3 tonnes of scales (representing 13,800 pangolins) in Hong Kong in January (a shipment from Nigeria bound for Vietnam); 30 tons of live and frozen animals and body parts in Malaysia in February. As the Asian species, especially the Sundanese and Chinese species, are no longer commercially viable because there are very few of them left, local demand is met by intercontinental trade. Paul De Ornellas, WWF UK’s chief wildlife advisor, describes it as “one continent moving wildlife from another”.
The MCS says the species is “one step away from extinction” in the wild. Its range, which until the mid-20th century stretched from Norway and Ireland to Morocco and the Black Sea, has shrunk by 80%; it was declared extinct in the North Sea. This demersal sessile fish is most threatened by trawling of other species, where it is part of the bycatch.
Once widespread in Vietnam and China, this species is now known to have only four individuals, thanks to the local appetite for its meat and eggs. With two males in various Vietnamese lakes and another pair in China’s so far unsuccessful captive breeding program (the male has a damaged penis, according to the New Yorker), Couchman says it would be very surprising if the species survives. The plight of this freshwater turtle underscores the plight of the wider turtle population: they are the second most endangered group of vertebrates in the world, after primates.
Found in the mountains of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, this gorilla is particularly vulnerable to poaching for wild meat associated with illegal mining camps. While another subspecies of the eastern gorilla, the mountain gorilla, is the only great ape whose numbers are increasing, the eastern lowland subspecies is steadily declining. Although violence in the region has prevented an accurate count, its population is estimated to have dropped by 77% to 3,800 in one generation, according to the Edge of Existence list.
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These mysterious fish migrate from the Atlantic (believed to spawn in the Sargasso Sea) to freshwater and coastal waters where they grow, then return to the ocean to reproduce. Although little is understood about the two processes, both young (“glass”) and mature (silver or yellow) eels have been consistently overfished to the extent that catches have halved since the 1960s. As overexploitation is one of the many threats facing eels, the MCS urges us to “avoid consuming the European eel at any stage of its life cycle”.
Christoph Schweitzer of the Bristol Zoological Society says this group of monkey species – there are 18 of them – is a prime example of large-bodied primates being hunted to extinction “because they are good family food”. They are found throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where habitat degradation and improved road access have led to the commercialization of hunting for wild animal meat, with devastating consequences. One species, Miss Waldron’s red colobus, is already considered extinct, having not been seen in the wild since 1978, while the most recently discovered, the Niger Delta red colobus, is on track to become extinct within the next five years.
Madagascar’s lemurs, the largest of which is the singing black and white indri, are the largest group of primates in the world, with 105 of the island’s 111 known species and subspecies threatened with extinction. While habitat degradation from slash-and-burn agriculture has long been a problem (with human eating habits posing an indirect threat), according to Schweitzer, the last 15 years have seen an alarming increase in subsistence hunting and commercial poaching for local restaurants. This new threat is linked to the political and economic crisis on the island. According to Kuchman, people are starving.
They may look like antelopes, but these large forest-dwelling mammals found in the Annamite Mountains on the border between Laos and Vietnam are closer to wild cattle and buffalo. Western science learned about their existence only in the early 1990s, when the horns were found in the homes of Vietnamese hunters.
Little is known about them today, including how many remain. Edge of Existence says there may be as few as 30 left. For De Ornellas, the saola is linked to the “empty forest syndrome,” a real problem in this region of Southeast Asia, where almost all large animals have been hunted for food. Thanks to years of campaigning by wildlife groups, it is widely known that African elephants and rhinos are threatened by the trade in their valuable tusks and horns. Laws and regulations have been tightened and in many countries it is now difficult, if not impossible, to sell elephant and rhino products legally.
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What is less well known is that another large African pachyderm, the common hippopotamus, is endangered in many parts of the continent, and that thousands of hippopotamus products, including hides, skulls and teeth, are legally bought and sold around the world every year.
A small consortium of American conservation and animal protection groups is now trying to change that, demanding that the US government strengthen legal protections for the common hippopotamus under the Endangered Species Act.
There are two species of hippopotamus in Africa: the endangered dwarf hippopotamus, which is found in a small part of West Africa, and the larger common hippopotamus, which is found in large areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But despite its name, the common hippopotamus is not common in its native range. It has been extirpated in at least four countries, and its populations are small and declining in many others. In some countries, where this species was recently numerous, only tens or a few hundred individuals remain.
Many experts say the trade in hippo parts is not the biggest threat to the animal and that a ban is unlikely to benefit conservation.
