As I have published, there are over 10,000 animals endangered, and right behind them there are another 10,000 that are threatened. If people don’t act now, all 20,000 are going to one day be extinct. One team of scientists did just that.
The Arabian Oryx was thought to have been hunted to complete extinction by poachers. David Mallon, co-chair of an antelope specialist group said, “As soon as motor vehicles and modern weapons arrived, the destructive potential of hunting rapidly increased. Before, if you were on a camel and you had a single shot, by the time you had another bullet in the gun, the oryx would’ve run off. But when motor vehicles and more modern, reloadable rifles were introduced — you can wear oryx out through exhaustion — hunting became a lot easier.”
A team of scientists went off on a quest to find the remaining Arabian Oryx. They brought a couple back and bred them. There are now a total of about 1,220 in the wild, moving the population up to threatened; the first animal species to come from thought extinction to a “mere” Threatened. To move the Oryxes up to Near Threatened, the population needs to reach 1,400 but considering where they came from and where they are now, that is just one small jump for Oryx, yet one huge leap for Animal Kind. Let’s make a difference; one creature at a time.
Nature News 