Question: hi how many animals are endanged?

Kate Salmon answered on 10 Mar 2014:

Hi @Gracefulforever04, this is a difficult question to answer because first of all, we don’t know how many species are already out there! There could be animals that we haven’t even discovered yet so we wouldn’t know if they went extinct. There are currently around 6000 species on the endangered list including rhinos, lions, tigers, whales, elephants and polar bears- you can skim through them here (http://www.earthsendangered.com/list.asp). These species become endangered through hunting, habitat loss (like losing your home) and from other species invading (e.g. like the grey squirrel in the UK taking all the food from our native red squirrel). People like the WWF (World Wide Fund for nature) help to conserve these animals through their conservation programs.

According to the WWF, between 0.1- 0.01% of species will become extinct each year. We know there are ~2 million species in the whole world which means between 200-2000 species go extinct every year 🙁