Scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah)

The Scimitar-horned Oryx (Oryx dammah), sometimes called Libyan Oryx, White Oryx, Red-breasted Oryx or Scimitar-horned Oryx, lived in the steppes and semi-deserts of central Niger, Chad, southern Libya and the Sahara. The last wild populations died out there in the 1970s and 1980s. The survival of the species today relies on captive populations: reintroduction projects have been underway since the early 2000s, in reserves in Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia. These projects also resulted in the reclassification of the species from “extinct” to “in danger” of extinction in 2023 by the IUCN.