The 301 Mammal Species Most Threatened by Overhunting

Earth’s mammals are being eaten into extinction. A massive study published last year in the journal Royal Society Open Science took a deep dive into the worldwide wildlife trade and identified the 301 mammal species most at risk from overhunting.

The species, which are typically eaten for food or for their purported medicinal qualities, include tigers, several medium-sized cats, 126 species of primates, all eight species of pangolins, dozens of ungulate species, more than 20 species of bats, several kangaroos, four species of rhinos, and a long list of rodents. Only 2 percent of these species have stable or increasing populations, according to the paper.

As the authors wrote, this is a much bigger story than just the 301 mammal species. It’s also about the cascading effect of the loss of these animals on their native ecosystems. For example, when large predator species disappear, the populations of their former prey animals explode, creating consequences for other animals and vegetation. Beyond that, these impending extinctions also affect human food security, economic livelihoods, and even the transmission of zoonotic diseases.

The picture presented by this paper is admittedly bleak, but it ends on a hopeful note with a list of five conservation actions that could help turn all of this around. Those include improving legal protections for wildlife, empowering local communities to benefit from wildlife conservation, providing alternative sources of food, and increasing education and family planning to lower human birth rates, especially in rural areas.

There is little doubt that wild-caught meat provides an essential element to human nutrition in many areas around the world. What is also clear, however, is that current hunting for all of these species exists at unsustainable levels. Left unchecked, it could lead to ecological collapse in some of the areas of the world least able to adapt. That would spell doom not just for the animals, but also the people who surround them.

Below, you can find the full list of the 301 mammal species identified by the paper as being the most at risk.

A version of this article was originally published by Scientific American.

John R. Platt

is the editor of The Revelator. An award-winning environmental journalist, his work has appeared in Scientific American, Audubon, Motherboard, and numerous other magazines and publications. His “Extinction Countdown” column has run continuously since 2004 and has covered news and science related to more than 1,000 endangered species. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and the National Association of Science Writers. John lives on the outskirts of Portland, Ore., where he finds himself surrounded by animals and cartoonists.

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