Are endangered species becoming inbred?

Inbreeding and endangered species management: is New Zealand out of step with the rest of the world? ... depression are unlikely to occur in natural populations, although partial purging may be more likely where small populations have become inbred over an extended period of time, such as on small isolated islands. read more

There'a an article about minimum viable population on Wikipedia. Minimum viable population is usually estimated as the population size necessary to ensure between 90 and 95 percent probability of survival between 100 to 1,000 years into the future. read more

Save our species. Richard Frankham, a conservation geneticist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, says some epigenetic influence comes as no great surprise. “However, to find that reversing epigenetic effects by chemical treatment completely eliminated inbreeding depression is extremely surprising.” Many endangered species are inbred. read more

Because the proportionate loss of heterozygosity equals the inbreeding coefficient (Falconer and Mackay 1996), most endangered species are already inbred. If"nongenetic" factors drove species to extinction before inbreeding was a problem, there would be no such difference. read more