The Wildlife Conservation Society lists 10 animals that they have dubbed the Rarest of the Rare.
The Wildlife Conservation Society has released a list of “Rarest of the Rare” in the 2010-2011 edition of State of the Wild. The ten animals in the list have been extracted from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s list of Critically Endangered animals. The classification of Critically Endangered is described as a species facing an “extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.” Often this meaning will be represented by the species’ number being reduced by approximately 80% in the wild over the last 10 years, or on average three generations.
Unfortunately, as of 2009, the total number of plants and animals listed as Critically Endangered numbers somewhere over the 3,200 mark.