North America’s Most Endangered Animals
Snails, marmots, condors and coral reef are among the many species on the continent that are close to extinction
- By Megan Gambino, Erin Wayman and Sarah Zielinski
- Smithsonian.com, May 19, 2011
(Erich Schlegel / International_NI / Corbis)
The smallest of the world’s sea turtles, Kemp’s ridleys are also the most endangered. In 1947, 42,000 of these turtles were filmed nesting on a single beach near Rancho Nuevo, Mexico. That film also captured people digging up the nests to collect the eggs, which number more than 100 per nest; the eggs are eaten and are considered an aphrodisiac. In the United States, all six sea turtle species are listed as threatened or endangered. As with other species, many Kemp’s ridleys have been killed after getting trapped in fishing gear as they travel up and down the East Coast. By 1985, only 702 turtle nests were found in their entire nesting range, which extends into Texas.
Officials in the United States and Mexico have been working to protect Kemp’s ridleys for decades. There is now a system of reserves, including the Rancho Nuevo beach, where turtles can safely nest. People as far away as Massachusetts help by rescuing turtles that take a wrong turn when moving south and getting stuck in Cape Cod Bay. Those efforts have seen success—an estimated 8,000 Kemp’s ridley sea turtles nested in 2009. – SZ
Comments (11)
Omg that is so cool but sad at the same time
Posted by Justin ferretty on April 15,2013 | 01:18 PM
that giant sea bass is huge.Who knew the most endangerd speicies is a snail.
Posted by lily whitford on February 27,2013 | 07:44 PM
Doing a project on the 1st HELP ME!!!
Posted by zsShannon on January 22,2013 | 05:08 PM
do yall like them
Posted by on November 5,2012 | 10:07 AM
I cant belive it
Posted by on November 5,2012 | 10:04 AM
this is realy realy nice.i like it very much.
Posted by ishara on July 25,2012 | 04:24 AM
Hunting actually was a minor contributor to the Red Wolf demise. Habitat loss was a major contributor, but the finishing blow was the expansion eastward of the Coyote. They crossbred with the Red Wolf and just about wiped them out.
There was a viable population of the wolf in southern AR until the late 1940s. That's when coyotes began to show up. By the mid to late 1950s the wolf had disappeared.
Posted by Kenneth Jones on June 16,2011 | 12:07 PM
Add an Ivory Billed Woodpecker!
Posted by Savannah Montgomery on June 12,2011 | 12:05 PM
thank you, thank you, thank you from my heart for saving the habitat as well as these beautiful wolves. i feel a strong connection to all wolves and this story was uplifting, encouraging, and worth my two minute feeble effort to say thank you for caring about and taking action to save these animals.
Posted by Sunshine on June 9,2011 | 07:10 PM
Our eyes are in the front of our heads but we are blind to the future of the earth and its inhabitants. We are the last species to evolve from earth's origins (not inclduing nuclear mutations) and we seem to be intent on being its last to survive our own predatory habits. Wait. Isn't that why we have wars, to eliminate ourselves?
Posted by jklough on May 28,2011 | 08:53 PM
A porpoise endemic to Mexico, the vaquita (Phocoena sinus) is now widely-recognized by marine mammal biologists as the most-endangered marine mammal in the world (Jaramillo-Legorreta et al. 2007). The species is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List authority, and as Endangered on the U.S. Endangered Species List, and Mexico has also listed the vaquita as Endangered and considered it the first of five top-priority species for conservation action (SEMARNAT 2008).
Population size of the vaquita was estimated in 2008 from a line-transect survey. The resulting estimate was 245 individuals (Gerrodette et al. 2011). This is much lower than a 1997 estimate using similar methods (567 individuals - Jaramillo-Legorreta et al. 1999). From this, it was estimated that the population has been declining by 7.6% per year, and if the decline has continued in the last couple of years, then there would likely be only about 200 porpoises left now. All this means there is a window of at most a few years in which to implement solutions to save the species (see Jaramillo-Legorreta et al. 2007).
Posted by Thomas Jefferson, Ph.D. on May 21,2011 | 10:12 AM