In the past decade, the amount of animals going extinct has multiplied by 10,000 percent! now between 17 and 50 species are going extinct a year. A big reason for that is poaching, especially in Madagascar and Thailand. A lot of animal dealers in Southeast Asia are selling illegal extinct animals in the black market stores for profit. It is a big time business. They get a ton of money a year. It is such a big concern that there is a law that if you find a new species, which happens a lot in Madagascar, the area where you find the new species will be goverment protected. Pretty soon you won't be finding any more polar bears if you travel to Alaska. The ice is cracking now thanks to global warming.
Recently, many animals have been going extinct. Even though many may see an animal as extinct, a lot of the time, there are more of that animal, just in places we don't know of. Here is an example of an animal that has gone extinct as of late. The animal is a Chinese River Dolphin. These were once a very smart and funloving, plentiful animal. Now the last uncontested sighting was in 2004. They are considered extinct by many scientists, and if they aren't extinct, they are most likely functionally extinct (only very few of them exist, as in less than 10). They were hunted for there nice and smooth skin, and also there meat was considered a delicacy for many Asian people.