What animals are in danger?
the great apes of Africa and Asia could be close to extinction in the wild. The Mekong giant catfish is one of the world’s largest freshwater fish. It’s up to three meters long. Numbers have dropped by 80 percent in just 13 years because of humans. If that carries on it will soon disappear. # There are now less than 1,000 pandas left in the wild. # A hundred years ago there were 100,000 tigers in the wild, now there are less than 7,000. Three types of tiger, the Bali, Caspian and Javan tiger, have already become extinct. The South China tiger is struggling to survive. # There used to be millions of koalas in Australia. Now there are less than 100,000. A species is called endangered when there are so few of its kind left that it could disappear from the planet altogether and become ‘extinct.’ Extinct means an animal hasn’t been seen in the wild for 50 years. In total 762 plant and animal species are now recorded as extinct. Why are they dying out? * Pollution, chopping down rainforests
