The most critically endangered species on our list of

the ten most critically endangered animals is the

ivory-billed woodpecker, which livesor livedin
the Southeastern part of the US as well as Cuba.
This huge woodpecker was considered extinct until
2004, when a handful of tantalizing reports of
sightings in Arkansas and Florida began to trickle in.
However, definitive proof for the ivory-bills
continued existence has remained elusive, and if a
population does exist, it is likely to be tiny and
extremely vulnerable. The ivory-billed woodpecker
owes its near- or complete extinction to habitat loss
(logging) as well as over-exploitation by humans,
who hunted it for its feathers.

The Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) is a

very rare leopard subspecies that lives only in the
remote and snowy northern forests of eastern
Russians Primorye region. Its former range
included Korea and northern China, but the Amur
leopard is now extinct in those countries. A 2007
census counted only 14-20 adult Amur leopards and
5-6 cubs. Threats facing the species include habitat
loss due to logging, road building and encroaching
civilization, poaching (illegal hunting) and global
climate change.

The Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus) is the

most endangered of the worlds five rhinoceros
species, with an estimated 40-60 animals remaining
on the western tip of the Island of Java (Indonesia)
in Ujung Kulon National Park. The last member of
another tiny population in Vietnams Cat Tien
National Park was killed by poachers in 2011. The
water- and swamp-loving Javan rhinoceros formerly
ranged throughout Southeast Asia and Indonesia,
but has been hunted to near-extinction for its horn,
which is used to make Asian folk medicines.
Although it is now protected, it may not have a
large-enough breeding population to prevent the
species from going extinct.

It is very difficult to say that one lemur species is

more endangered than another. There are around
100 species of these primates, all of which live on
the Island of Madagascar, off the southeast coast of
Africa. Virtually all of them are declining dramatically
in population, mostly because of habitat loss due to
logging in the forests where they livebut also
because of illegal hunting. Many lemur species are
listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered by
the International Union for the Conservation of
Nature (IUCN).

There are two lowland gorillas native to West Africa:

the western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), which is
the most numerous of the four gorilla subspecies,
with over 100,000 individuals in the wild, and the
Cross River gorilla (Gorilla diehli), of which only a
tiny population of a few hundred remains. Both are
listed by the IUCN as Critically Endangered because
of the fact that their populations have declined by
over 80 percent during the past 25 yearsand are
projected to continue dropping over the coming
decades. Causes for the increasing scarcity include
habitat loss and illegal commercial hunting by
poachers, who sell gorillas for food in West African
markets. But the largest killer of gorillas has been a
deadly illnessthe incurable ebola viruswhich
has ended the lives of up to 90 percent of these
great apes in some forest areas.
The leatherback sea turtle (Demochelys coriacea) is
the earths biggest turtle and has the largest range
of any species, swimming all over the globe from the
tropics to the sub-polar regions. When it comes time
to dig a nest and lay its eggs, it crawls out onto
sandy sub-tropical beaches the world over. The
leatherback is also critically endangered. According
to the IUCN, in 1982 there were around 115,000
adult female leatherback turtles in the world; just 14
years later, there were only 20,000 to 30,000and
the population has continued to plummet. The
leatherbacks problems include theft of its eggs by
humans, illegal hunting and nesting-habitat loss due
to beach development, and the erosion of beaches
due to global climate change. In addition,
leatherbacks sometimes die after ingesting plastic
debris they find floating in the ocean, which they
mistake for food such as jellyfish.