China's national animal, Giant Panda is out of the Endangered List after decades of conservation programs and effort.

The IUCN has officially changed the giant panda's status from "endangered" to "vulnerable" on its Red List of Threatened Species, as the population of these creatures has apparently increased by 17 percent during the decade up to 2014. In 2014, a census report found that 1,850 giant pandas are living the wild in China.

Marco Lambertini, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Director General, said: "For over fifty years, the giant panda has been the globe's most beloved conservation icon as well as the symbol of WWF". According to CNN, there are now 67 reserves in China that protect almost 5,400 square miles of habitat and around 67 percent of the entire Chinese panda population.

China's State Forestry Administration said Monday that it was too early to downgrade the giant panda's conservation status, stressing that there are still threats to the animal's survival.

There are no exact figures for the numbers of cubs, but estimates bring the total number of giant pandas to 2,060.

Nearly five months old baby gorilla Jengo plays with a tussock in his enclosure on May 8, 2025 at the zoo in Leipzig, eastern Germany. The giant panda, immortalized in the logo of the WWF - a non-profit organization fighting for wilderness preservation - is finally going places, thanks to years of efforts to prevent the species from extinction.

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In 1981, China prohibited trading panda skins.

"The improved status confirms that the Chinese government's efforts to conserve this species are effective", it added.

Sadly it also revealed that the eastern gorilla is now endangered, meaning four of the six great ape species are now listed internationally as "critically endangered". So while their populations are increasing in the wild, there is still a lot of work to be done to keep the forward momentum going.

The species lives in the forests of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, northwest Rwanda and southwest Uganda.

The IUCN said its population has dropped more than 70 percent in 20 years. This is because of climate change, and as a result the population could be reduced. The challenges we still face to save this and other species, including our own, are still not insurmountable.

Conservation actions have also paid off for the Tibetan Antelope, which has moved from Endangered to Near Threatened.