10 birds that came back from the brink of extinction

• The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) keeps a record of animals, fungi, and plants that are on the brink of extinction on their Red List of Threatened Species.
• There are more than 26,500 species that are threatened with extinction, including 14% of birds.
• Even though some species are at risk of becoming extinct, they can still make a comeback.

TheInternational Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) keeps a record of animals, fungi, and plants that are on the brink of extinction on theirRed List of Threatened Species.

For each of the 96,500 total species that have been analyzed by the IUCN, each is listed on a scale of danger that goes: Extinct, Extinct in the wild, Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable, Near Threatened, and Least Concern.

There are more than 26,500 species that are threatened with extinction on the list, including 14% of birds, according to theIUCN.

Just because a species is at risk of becoming extinct, however, doesn’t mean it will. With the work of conservationists, animals can come back and thrive.  

Here are 10 birds species that returned from the brink of extinction.

The northern bald ibis went from critically endangered to endangered this year.

Thenorthern bald ibis, from Morocco, was at an all-time low of 59 breeding pairs in 1998 because of hunting, pesticides, and loss of habitat, according toBirdLife.org, but today numbers have risen to 147 breeding pairs and the birds spread to two new breeding sites in 2017.

Though there is still work to be done to get the bird off the endangered list, conservationists have hope it will be possible to recover the northern bald ibis fully.

The pink pigeon went from endangered to vulnerable this year.

By 1990, thepink pigeon, native to the island of Mauritius — the home of the extinct Dodo bird — had only 10 wild birds, according toBirdLife.org. After a decade of work to save the bird, conservationists were able to help the number of pink pigeons in the wild reach 300 and get the bird moved from critically endangered to endangered in 2000.

This year, with 400 pink pigeons in the wild, they were downlisted again to Vulnerable.  

There were only 70 Lear’s macaw in the wild in the 1980s.

Native to Brazil, the beautiful blueLear's Macaw was a popular victim of the pet trade. From the end of the 1970s to the late 1980s, the Lear’s Macaw population dropped significantly, to the point of there being only 70 known birds in the wild, according to theAmerican Bird Conservancy.

Today, though the bird is listed as endangered, the population of mature individuals is estimated to be between 250-999, according to theRed List.