The male Xerces Blue Butterfly was a brilliant blue-violet and the female was a soft brown. Now extinct, but always very rare, the Xerces Blue Butterfly was last seen in 1941 and was found only in the San Francisco Bay Area. After human encroachment and the clearing of the land for building homes, the extinction of the Xerces Blue Butterfly is blamed on the loss of suitable foliage where the females would have normally laid their eggs.

As human population increases in Asia and more farm land is needed for cattle and agriculture, the giant panda is quickly losing the bamboo forests that he needs to survive. The giant panda's numbers in the wild are less than 1000 and their reproduction rate in captivity is very small.

To allow more grazing space for cattle, the Burchell's Zebra (shown on the left) was killed to extinction in 1910 by cattle ranchers, and the Quagga was killed to extinction in 1883 for the same reason.