The blue whale, the biggest animal that ever lived, has been hunted almost to extinction.

BBC: Stockholm: Birth of the green generation

It was persecuted almost to extinction but has now been re-introduced and is colonizing all over the continent.

CNN: All creatures great, small and disappearing

Hunted almost to extinction at the beginning of the 20th Century, the species of goat-antelope was reintroduced to the Majella in the 1990s and now successfully breeds there.

BBC: Italy��s wilderness, far from the madding crowds

The mathematical sciences were neglected almost to the point of extinction within the mediaeval educational system, the schools teaching almost no mathematics and the universities only paying lip service to a narrow curriculum of mathematical topics at the very lowest level.

FORBES: A Long Forgotten Father of the Scientific Revolution

In other parts of Africa, primal scenes like these are almost impossible to witness because the animals have been hunted to near extinction.

BBC: The rhino wars of central Kenya