Spookdaddy
Cuckoo
- Joined
- May 24, 2006
- Messages
- 7,895
- Location
- Midwich
...I'll have to see if I can dig out some sources.
That proved much easier than I thought; I remembered he had the same surname as a welsh rugby player.
See here.
...I'll have to see if I can dig out some sources.
Horse chestnut trees (among others) are heading for extinction:
This 23-Foot-Long Fish May Be First Official Extinction of 2020
One of the largest freshwater fish in the world may be extinct.
In a new paper, scientists led by Hui Zhang of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences in Wuhan, China, argued that the Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) is no more, probably having gone extinct sometime between 2005 and 2010. The fish was once common in the Yangtze River in China, the researchers wrote, but overfishing and habitat fragmentation sealed the species' doom. And there is no hope for bringing it back.
"As no individuals exist in captivity and no living tissues are conserved for potential resurrection, the fish should be considered extinct according to the IUCN Red List criteria," Zhang and his colleagues wrote in a paper published in the March 2020 issue of the journal Science of the Total Environment, referring to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's list of threatened and endangered species. ...
The Chinese paddlefish was an impressive creature, with a large, protruding snout. This nose gave the fish one of its nicknames, xiang yu, or "elephant fish" in Mandarin. The paddlefish could grow as long as 23 feet (7 meters), putting it among sturgeon and alligator gar as the largest freshwater fish in the world. Paddlefish were caught regularly in the Yangtze River as late as the 1970s, according to Zhang and his colleagues. In 1981, a major dam, the Gezhouba Dam, was built in the river and split the Chinese paddlefish population in two.
The dam also prevented fish trapped below it from swimming upstream to tributaries where they could spawn. The species was listed as one of China's most threatened animals in 1989, but the population continued to decline despite that listing. The last sighting of a Chinese paddlefish was in 2003.
Now, Zhang and his team wrote, the paddlefish is gone. The researchers scoured records of sightings dating back to 1981 and conducted field surveys in 2017 and 2018 of the Yangtze and its tributaries and lakes: the Yalong River, the Heng River, the Min River, the Tuo River, the Chishui River, the Jialing River, the Wu River, the Han River, Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake. The researchers set up fishing nets to capture species in these waterways and surveyed local fish markets, looking for evidence that this paddlefish species might still be caught.
They found 332 species of fish but not a single Chinese paddlefish. ...
RIP, smooth handfish. You were weird, and now you’re extinct.
An unusual-looking fish with bulging eyes, a mohawk-like fin on its head and the ability to walk on the seafloor with its pectoral and pelvic fins has reached a grim milestone. The so-called smooth handfish (Sympterichthys unipennis) has been declared extinct, the first modern marine fish on record to completely vanish, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
A mere 200 years ago, the smooth handfish was so plentiful in Australia — where it basked in Tazmania's warm, coastal waters — that it was among the first fish species to be scientifically documented Down Under. In 1802, French naturalist François Péron nabbed the first specimen of the odd-looking creature with a dip net in southeastern Tasmania, a feat that worked because handfish live in shallow waters, the IUCN said in a statement.
Now, Péron's specimen (which you can see here) is the only smooth handfish scientists have left to study. It's not that researchers haven't been looking. Despite extensive underwater surveys along the Australian coastline, the smooth handfish hasn't "been sighted for over 200 years," meaning that Péron was the only scientist on record to collect one, according to a 2017 study in the journal Biological Conservation. ...
I'm thinking that the very act of discovery may have caused the extinction. Very sad.
(The recently discovered red handfish - a cousin of the smooth handfish)
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/handfish-extinct.html
FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/climate-...ildlife-fish-b6e61676548a1d7b2f81a6512cbed7a7US says ivory-billed woodpecker, 22 other species extinct
Death’s come knocking a last time for the splendid ivory-billed woodpecker and 22 more birds, fish and other species: The U.S. government is declaring them extinct.
It’s a rare move for wildlife officials to give up hope on a plant or animal, but government scientists say they’ve exhausted efforts to find these 23. And they warn climate change, on top of other pressures, could make such disappearances more common as a warming planet adds to the dangers facing imperiled plants and wildlife.
The ivory-billed woodpecker was perhaps the best known species the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday will announce is extinct. It went out stubbornly and with fanfare, making unconfirmed appearances in recent decades that ignited a frenzy of ultimately fruitless searches in the swamps of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. ...
Others such as the flat pigtoe, a freshwater mussel in the southeastern U.S., were identified in the wild only a few times and never seen again, meaning by the time they got a name they were fading from existence. ...
The factors behind the disappearances vary — too much development, water pollution, logging, competition from invasive species, birds killed for feathers and animals captured by private collectors. In each case, humans were the ultimate cause. ...
Another thing they share: All 23 were thought to have at least a slim chance of survival when added to the endangered species list beginning in the 1960s. Only 11 species previously have been removed due to extinction in the almost half-century since the Endangered Species Act was signed into law. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62638485?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGADugong: Animal that inspired mermaid tales extinct in China
Researchers have declared a mammal related to the manatee - said to have inspired ancient tales of mermaids and sirens - extinct in China. ...
Known as the ocean's most gentle giant, the dugong's slow, relaxed behaviour is likely to have made it vulnerable to overfishing and shipping accidents.
It still exists elsewhere in the world but is facing similar threats.
Prof Samuel Turvey, from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), who co-authored the research study, said: "The likely disappearance of the dugong in China is a devastating loss."
Scientists at ZSL and the Chinese Academy of Science reviewed all historical data on where dugongs had previously been found in China.
They found there had been no verified sightings by scientists since 2000.
In addition, the researchers turned to citizen science to interview 788 community members living in those coastal regions identified, to determine when local people had last seen one.
On average, residents reported not having seen a dugong for 23 years. Only three people had seen one in the past five years.
This has led the researchers to declare the dugong functionally extinct - meaning "it is no longer viable... to sustain itself", Heidi Ma, postdoctoral researcher at ZSL, told the BBC. ...