Gone from the wild is a place fact
Updated September 2026
What EW is
IUCN’s Extinct in the Wild category is for taxa that survive only in cultivation, in captivity, or as a naturalized population well outside the past range. It is not “very rare.” It is “the wild place no longer holds them.” This catalog includes EW because a photograph of a living animal can still be a photograph of a species that has no wild home.
The Spix’s macaw is the example on purpose. Reintroduction attempts are a recovery-programme fact; they do not let us relabel the badge ourselves. If Wikidata or the Red List changes the category, the dossier should follow. Until then, EW is the category we display.
What EW is not
The California condor was downlisted from Extinct in the Wild to Critically Endangered after wild populations were re-established. Treat that bird as CR on this catalog. Using it as the EW poster animal is how a site gets the product wrong. Twenty-one EW records is a page count, not a zoo census. Open stats for the current bar.
How to read an EW dossier
Read the badge, the photograph, and the official assessment year. If a public article describes a release, that is a reported event. It is not this site declaring the wild population restored. Read the assessment for the criteria the assessors used. Come back to the dossier for the bird that still has a picture and no wild river of its own.
Quick answers
- Is the California condor Extinct in the Wild?
- No. It is Critically Endangered after wild populations were re-established. Do not use it as the EW example.
- Does a captive flock mean the species is safe?
- It means the species is not globally extinct. EW still means the wild population is gone.
- How many EW animals are on this site?
- 21 catalog pages as of the current build. That is pages, not a head-count.