It wasn’t long ago since the Caribbean monk seal was officially listed as extinct by the US Government. And now the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, reports that the Northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is “on the brink of extinction“.

According to older reports the only remaining population of Northern white rhino is restricted in the wild to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The population was 30 in April 2003 but was reduced due to poaching to only four confirmed animals by August 2006. Now in 2008 the IUCN haven’t been able to find any Northern white rhinos at all.

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Iceland has killed two polar bears since the U.S. Department of Interior formally listed the polar bear as a “threatened” species a few weeks ago.

The first polar bear, named Björn Björnesson, came to Iceland in the beginning of June this year. The polar bear was shot as soon as he was spotted for fears he would get into the nearest village. According to the hunters, killing the polar bear was the only solution as it would take to long to get the anaesthetic that was on the other side of the island.

The polar bear had probably travelled the 29 miles (47 kilometres) from Greenland on a flake of ice and swim the last miles to Iceland.

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The Caribbean monk seal has gone “the way of the dodo” and been officially listed as extinct by the US Government. The Caribbean monk seal is, so far, the only seal species to go extinct due to human causes.

“Humans left the Caribbean monk seal population unsustainable after overhunting them, Unfortunately, this led to their demise and labels the species as the only seal to go extinct from human causes.”

The last time anyone sighted the Caribbean monk seal was in 1952, over 50 years ago, at Seranilla Bank, between Jamaica and the Yucatan Peninsula. In 1967 the USA listed the species as endangered due to human activities.

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During a nighttime robbery, the horn of a 120-year-old stuffed rhinoceros was stolen, from the museum where it was displayed. Museum authorities warned that using this horn as a traditional medicine on the Asian black market could have lethal consequences because it was preserved by the use of the deadly arsenic and DDT.

But causing immidiate death should not be the only concern. The fact that DDT is still in use is really alarming, since it is a substance that causes accumulation. As an environmental term, accumulation is the gradual increase of pollutants in living organisms by direct adsorption or through food chains. The pollutants that cause accumulation cannot be metabolized or aborted by any means, so accumulation of the substance increases while going up a food chain.

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Today the U.S. Department of Interior formally listed the polar bear as a “threatened” species.

Environmental organisations have called for the polar bears to be listed on the “endangered” species list hoping it could lead to actions to combat climate change.

Unfortunately interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne wouldn’t want to label the polar bears as “endangered” but rather as a “threatened” species. That means they’ve successfully downplayed the threat to polar bears from climate change and won’t need to take any serious actions to protect the polar bears from the constantly increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

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It is a fact that more than 1000 whales and dolphins are killed every year by whalehunters, who make some endangered species head torwards extinction.

Mainly Japan, with support from Norway and Iceland, refuses to obey the rules of the moratorium set in 1986, from the Worldwide Whalehunting Commitee, which had as a goal to let the whale population increase, after it’s dramatic drop between the years 1925-1975.

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Since Greenpeace left the Antarctic, due to low fuel, the Japanese whalers began their slaughter of whales. Australia who is strongly condemning the whale slaughter is still following the Japanese whalers. And yesterday they could release images and videos of the Japan whaling fleets slaughter of a whale mother and her calf (video after the jump).

Peter Garrett, Australian environment minister, said that “it is explicitly clear from these images that this is indiscriminate killing of whales, where you have a whale and its calf killed in this way. And to claim that this is in any way scientific is to continue the charade that has surrounded this issue from day one.”

Mr Morimoto, japanese whalers ICR Director, said to the whalers defence that “it is necessary to conduct random sampling of the Antarctic minke population to obtain accurate statistical data.”

I wonder how “random” a “sampling” of 900 minke whales and 50 fin whales really is?

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China has a dream that the giant pandas it breeds in captivity will one day frolic in the mountains with their wild cousins. This is the next challenge for the scientists who manage the country’s biggest reserve for captive pandas. They have mastered the art of breeding the world’s iconic and endangered animal; now it is time to send some of their babies out into the real world.

The centre’s first experiment ended in tragedy, since the five-year-old panda that was released knew to survive on it’s own, but couldn’t protect itself from the other wild pandas and thus fallen to his death from a tree,after being pursued by wild pandas angered at an intruder in their territory.

Now two males and two females have been selected as the second attempt. Scientists running the program hope that wild pandas will be less likely to attack a female who strays into their territory. Everyone wishes the experiment has a happy end this time.

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