Critically Endangered is the highest risk category assigned by the IUCN Red List for wild species. Critically Endangered species are those that are either facing an extremely high risk of extinction, or have numbers which decreased, or will decrease, by 80% within three generations.
As the Red List does not consider a species extinct until extensive, targeted surveys have been conducted, species which are possibly extinct are still listed as 'Critically Endangered'. A new ideal category for 'Possibly Extinct' has been suggested by BirdLife International to categorize these taxa.
Read more about Critically Endangered: Species Examples
Famous quotes containing the words critically and/or endangered:
“We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create than by its groundwork and composition.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Man is imperfect. The reality he creates is always endangered by man.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)