Does Endangered mean I cannot keep it?

Not automatically. Wild status and pet law are separate. Check both.

Why only CR, EN, and EW?

Those are the animals already in the worst IUCN categories. Vulnerable would be a larger, thinner list.

Who assigns the category?

IUCN assessors. We display the category stored on Wikidata.

Three kinds of crisis

Updated September 2026

Photograph of Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus), recorded as Critically Endangered

Wild status

Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Extinct in the Wild are IUCN categories. We show the category Wikidata records. The official assessment — population numbers, criteria, year — lives on iucnredlist.org. 3,318 animals on this catalog have a photograph and one of those three categories.

Legal status

US exotic-pet law is a different layer. An axolotl can be common in the pet trade and Critically Endangered in the lakes of Xochimilco. A ferret can be illegal in California because of feral-population risk, not because ferrets are vanishing worldwide.

The native species

Most bans exist because of what happens if the pet gets loose: disease, hybridization, predation. That pipeline is how a tank animal puts a wild one in crisis.

Quick answers

Does Endangered mean I cannot keep it?: Not automatically. Wild status and pet law are separate. Check both.
Why only CR, EN, and EW?: Those are the animals already in the worst IUCN categories. Vulnerable would be a larger, thinner list.
Who assigns the category?: IUCN assessors. We display the category stored on Wikidata.