“If we downgrade their conservation status, or neglect or relax our conservation work, the populations and habitats of giant pandas could still suffer irreversible loss and our achievements would be quickly lost,” China’s State Forestry Administration, which spearheads the giant panda survey, said in a statement to the Associated Press on Monday. HONOLULU – The world’s largest living primate has been listed as critically endangered, making four of the six great ape species only one step away from extinction, according to a report released Sunday at the World Conservation Congress in Hawaii.
The giant panda is removed from IUCN's endangered species list but is replaced by the Eastern gorilla.