Animals we nearly lost to extinction

This article originally appeared and was published on AOL.com

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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