alt Hacker NewsThat is objectively a wrong summary of how IUCN Red List is calculated. There’s a variety of factors including rate of decline, and any of those factors can lead to a species being in the Endangered category.
https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/categories-and-criteri...
No one is farming for headlines.
the article says 20,000 was 10% of the population therefore the population is 180,000.
if "something might happen in the next 60 years to wipe out half the population" counts as making a species endangered, every species on the planet counts as endangered.