Critically Endangered
Dama gazelle
Nanger dama
Dama gazelle is a mammal in the family Bovidae (order Artiodactyla) — Nanger dama, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The dama gazelle is white with a reddish-brown head and neck.
Both sexes usually have medium-length ringed horns curved like an "S". Males' horns are about 35 cm (14 in) long, while females' horns are much shorter.
Range and habitat
A critically endangered species, it has disappeared from most of its former range due to overhunting and habitat loss, and natural populations only remain in Chad, Mali, and Niger. Its habitat includes grassland, shrubland, semi-deserts, open savanna and mountain plateaus.
A reserve for mhorr gazelles was set up in 1971 to help avoid extinction. This reserve, Parque de Rescate de la Fauna Sahariana (Rescue Park for Saharan Fauna) of the Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas (Experimental Station of Arid Zones), is in Spain.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Its diet includes shrubs, herbs, grasses, leaves (especially Acacia leaves), shoots, and fruit.
In crisis
N. D. Mhorr, the mhorr gazelle, is extinct in the wild, with the last known wild sighting in 1968. It is currently present in captive breeding programs in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and several efforts have reintroduced animals into former areas and others with a similar habitat. As of 2015, the IUCN lists it as critically endangered with a wild population of no more than 250.
Populations remain in Chad, Mali and Niger, and it has been reintroduced in Senegal and Tunisia. Habitat pressure from pastoral activity is another reason for decline, as are introduced diseases from livestock.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Dama gazelle is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Dama gazelle, Wikidata item Q725736. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
