South Africa’s proposal to have the Cape Mountain Zebra (Equus zebra zebra) down-listed from Appendix I to Appendix II has been adopted at the ongoing 17th Conference of Parties (CoP17) to Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The proposal was based on the remarkable recovery from just under 100 individual animals in the 1990s to an impressive over 5,000 in 2016, signifying the country’s success in the conservation of the subspecies.
In August 2015, the population of Cape Mountain Zebra comprised a minimum of around 4 800 individuals in no less than 75 subpopulations that are well distributed over the historical range of the subspecies.
As a result of this increase in their population, the Cape Mountain Zebra is no longer threatened with extinction, having recently been assessed as Least Concern in accordance with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
