Southeast Asia’s rarest animals down to last few dozen

The Javan rhino and Sumatran rhino now number only a few dozen each. The Cat Ba langur of Vietnam faces the same fate. The saola, a rare antelope-like animal in Laos’ Annamite mountains, may already be extinct. Southeast Asia’s wildlife is in crisis. More than 4,300 species in the region risk disappearing forever. The main drivers are human activity. Cities and farms are expanding. Forests are being cut down. The seas are warming. Traffickers also target rare animals for food, traditional medicine, and the pet trade. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) told This Week in Asia that this combination of threats is pushing species toward extinction at an alarming rate.