This doesn't actually add any protections for polar bears, which face tough conditions due to climate change, but it does require the Canadian government to come up with a comprehensive species management plan within three years. The Canadian Environment Minister has named polar bears ( Ursus maritimus) a "species of special concern" under the country's Species at Risk Act. With that news out of the way, let's catch up on some other species recently covered in Extinction Countdown:Ĭanada's Polar Bears Inch Toward Protection ( See my story from two weeks ago for the status of all other rhino species and subspecies.) How many more can we expect in the coming years?īy the way, the remaining rhino species in Africa and Asia remain under threat, as poaching is now at an all-time high this year, already beating last year's previous record. So there we have it: two rhino extinction announcements in the course of a month. The IUCN declared the western black rhino "likely extinct" in 2006 all attempts to find them since then have proved fruitless, and conservationists have now given up any hope of finding the animals alive. After decades of heavy poaching and weak protection, the species was last seen in 2000 in Cameroon-a country known for its violence and corruption-at which time the last 10 or so individuals in this subspecies were thought to be too spread out to find each other and breed. The loss of the western black rhino was, sadly, expected. The declaration came last week from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) as part of the latest update to its Red List of Threatened Species, which tracks the conservation status of endangered animals and plants around the world. Just two weeks after the World Wildlife Fund declared the Vietnam Javan rhinoceros ( Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus) extinct comes the announcement of another rhino extinction, this time the western black rhino ( Diceros bicornis longipes) of Africa.
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