Endangered
As one of the larger New Zealand animals, it has been a protected species since the 1890s, is in decline and is considered the most threatened sea lion in the world.
It has been inferred from middens that the Hooker's sea lion was made locally extinct in the Chatham Islands due to predation by the Moriori. There was thought to be a population of around 15,000 in the mid-1990s. This may have declined somewhat since an outbreak of disease in 1998 caused the deaths of an estimated 20 percent of adult females and 50 percent of pups that year. Estimates (based on pup-counts) were about 9,000 for 2008.
In 2010 the Department of Conservation - responsible for marine mammal conservation - changed the New Zealand Threat Classification System ranking from Nationally Endangered to Nationally Critical.
The Department of Conservation estimates that pup numbers have halved since 1998, and the species could be extinct by 2035.
Read more about this topic: New Zealand Sea Lion
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