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Over 40,000 animal and plant species are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) red list of threatened species and over 16,00 endangered species are threatened by extinction.
“The rapid loss of species we are seeing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate,” according to WWF Global.
These facts are bleak — but there has been some success in recovering threatened species.
While some animals spent time on the endangered species list and were nearly lost to extinction, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service — thanks to efforts by conservationists, the following animals have been recovered.
Columbian white-tailed deer
Lake Erie water snake
Concho water snake
Gray whale
Black bear
Steller sea lion
Virginia northern flying squirrel
American Alligator
Grey wolf
Island night lizard
Eastern grey kangaroo
Red Kangaroo
Western grey kangaroo
Morelets Crocodile
Peregrine Falcon
Brown Pelican
Bald eagle
Aleutian Canada goose
Delmarva Peninsula Fox Squirrel
Palau Ground Dove
Tinian Monarch
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