The State of Charismatic Fauna

Considering the amount of conservation effort that goes into protection of charismatic species, they have to be doing well! …Right?

It turns out that the situation is not as rosy as it seems. Despite having conservation efforts being disproportionately focused on these species, majority of charismatic fauna (identified under “The Phenomenon”) remain highly threatened and at risk of becoming extinct in the wild.

Tigers: identified to be the number one most charismatic species, tigers have a total population number of less than 7% their historic numbers, with 3 out of 9 subspecies being extinct while a 4th one is potentially extinct.

Lions: The second most charismatic animal, lions, continue to decline almost throughout Africa, and have an estimated population of less than 8% of historic numbers. All populations except one of 175 individuals have gone extinct in Eurasia.

As seen in the figure above created by Courchamp, et. al. (2018), other than giant pandas which have small but increasing populations, all the other 9 charismatic species included in the figure have decreasing population sizes, suggesting that the active conservation scene in the past few decades have not been sufficient to benefit even some of the most charismatic species on Earth.