page_title: New Zealand sea lion
section_title: Status
hierarchical_section_title: New Zealand sea lion / Status
caption_attribution_description: New Zealand Sea Lions at The Spit, Aramoana
context_page_description: The New Zealand sea lion, also known as Hooker's sea lion, and whakahao in Māori, is a species of sea lion that primarily breeds on New Zealand's subantarctic Auckland and Campbell islands and to some extent around the coast of New Zealand's South and Stewart islands. The New Zealand sea lion numbers around 10,000 and is perhaps the world's rarest sea lion species. They are the only species of the genus Phocarctos.
context_section_description: New Zealand sea lions are considered the most threatened sea lion in the world. The species' status is largely driven by the main breeding population at the Auckland Islands, which declined by ~50% between 2000 and 2015. The 2013 sea lion pup production count on the Auckland Islands showed the number of pups born on the islands has risen to 1931, from the 2012 figure of 1684 (dead pups are also counted, since the annual pup count is used to assess the population of breeding females, but not future births when the counted pups mature). The 2013 number was the highest in five years. The Campbell Island population 'appears to be increasing slowly' and births here comprise ~30% of the species' total. The Otago and Stewart Island sea lion populations are currently small, though increasing. Population estimates for the whole species declined from ~15,000 in the mid-1990s to 9,000 in 2008 (based on the number of pups born).
  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 Auckland Islands' sea lions, nearly 80% of the total, could be functionally extinct by 2035. However, the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries considers research on which this prediction is based is low quality and ‘should not be used in management decisions’. In 2015, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) changed the classification of this species to "Endangered", based on low overall population size, the small number of breeding populations and the projected trend of the Auckland Islands breeding population.
caption: Sea lions on Aramoana in the Otago Harbour
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