In 1981, however, a remnant population was discovered on a ranch near Meeteetse, Wyo., and a captive breeding program began.
In the 1950's, northern Minnesota had a remnant population of a few hundred wolves, Dr. Treves said.
Milliken called the rise of poaching in Namibia, which has the largest remnant population of black rhino, as "horrifyingly worrying".
Red kites, once just a tiny remnant population in Wales, are spreading through the country, with breeding pairs up from 32 to 420, in 25 years.
In the late 1940's, after an absence of a century, wild turkeys from a small remnant population in northern Pennsylvania crossed the border into western New York.
"If there are fish there, there aren't any amphibians or there is just a remnant population, and there is no evidence of breeding," Dr. Hartwell Welsh, a Forest Service research biologist, said of the salamanders.
Ron Gelardi, a manager at the Quogue Wildlife Refuge, near the site of the last reported sighting, said, "I think that the chances of there being a remnant population of wild cougars on Long Island really are zero".
At present the lion's main stronghold is in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Asiatic lion exists only as a remnant population made up of approximately 500 individuals inhabiting India's Gir National Park on the Kathiawar Peninsula.
A very small part of remnant population still exists.
Beau., which forms dense carpets around the remnant population of C. heterophyllus.
