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The Extinction Thread (Imminent / Declared Extinctions)

The cats in the example would suffer from the effects of a changing environment, and it would change their behaviour and numbers to adjust. We don't do that.
 
Kondoru said:
Think how different this scenario would be if they were a delicacy....

I remember having a very interesting discussion with someone about how a species' best chances for survival these days would be to become a delicacy. While in times past some creatures may have been eaten to extinction, these days breeding programs and intensive farming would latch on to anything commercially viable and makes sure it never became extinct while there was a market for its meat. We then went on to discuss whether being an intensively farmed species would be a better option than being an extinct species. It's a difficult choice. would any of us wish for (for example) tigers to become numerous again if this meant the majority of them were living the lives of battery farmed livestock? I know I wouldn't. I'd rather see every last one of them die out than let that happen.
 
Leaferne said:
The cats in the example would suffer from the effects of a changing environment, and it would change their behaviour and numbers to adjust. We don't do that.

It was just a hypothetical question to determin how we would feel if it was a different creature from human beings that had over populated the earth. Not realy a literal 'this is what would happen if cat's ruled the world' scenario. You could remove 'cats' and replace them with any species you wish. What if it was something creepy like ############ or giant spiders? What if it was the cutest, fluffiest breed of....whatever...would you still feel the same way about them as you do now about the human race?
 
Maybe the mods should put the Chinese River Dolphin thread in here...

South Island Kokako declared exinct

Conservation officials today formally declared the South Island kokako extinct, saying there had been no confirmed sightings for 40 years.


Rod Hitchmough, a scientific officer at the Department of Conservation (DOC) told a press briefing in Wellington that the kokako decision had attracted controversy.

"But the definition of extinct is that we are absolutely certain the last individual has died," said Mr Hitchmough, who compiled DOC's latest lists of threatened species, including six native insects and snails also declared extinct.

"It was last seen on the South Island in 1967," he said.

There had been further reports on Stewart Island in 1987 and other more recent sightings, but these had not been corroborated.

A panel of bird experts which drew up the previous list of the threat status of native animals and plants in 2002 had not been able to decide with certainty whether it had died out.

"There have been more recent sightings recorded but they have been less well-documented," Mr Hitchmough said.

"Now, given there have been no further convincing records, the panel decided to bite the bullet and list it as extinct.

"But it was probably extinct years ago".

Less than a year ago, veteran searchers seeking signs of the kokako unsuccessfully searched a valley east of Puysegur Point in Fiordland National Park for signs of the grey bird with orange wattles at each side of the beak.

That South Island kokako investigation team included Christchurch researcher Ron Nilsson, who has spent 20 years searching remote valleys in Nelson, Westland, Fiordland and Stewart Island.

Other searches have been made in Granville State Forest in the West Coast's Grey Valley and further north in the Paparoa Range near Charleston.

Conservation Minister Chris Carter told the Wellington briefing that the new threatened species list updated the "threat classification" status of 5819 of New Zealand's native plants and animals, and 44 had been given a change in status.

Almost half of those were listed in one of the seven threatened categories, and the rest required further research to determine if these were threatened or not.

"Some have improved, like the crested grebe and black petrel, others, such as the grey duck and riflemen are more endangered," Mr Carter said. "It's a wake-up call for us, as a country".

"Human-induced threats and the introduction of predators and pests continue to plague our native species," he said.

"The species that make up our country – the unique bird, reptile, plant and insect species that are endemic to these islands of ours – are what helps to make us New Zealanders, give us a unique place in the world and give us our identity," said Mr Carter.

Settlement of New Zealand by Maori and Europeans had made an incredible impact on the nation's biodiversity, Mr Carter said.

The total number of threatened species reported in the new list rose by 416 to 2788 – in many cases because new information had become available since the lists were last reviewed in 2002.

Another 984 species have been listed as "data deficient".

He said the list would be used to prioritise management of threatened species.

The battle to retain biodiversity was not only about resources – for which conservation had to compete with spending on areas such as health and education – but was also dependent on expertise in developing management plans and providing the science for managing threatened species.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/3930486a7693.html

Also more on Cryptomundo... http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-ne ... o-cryptid/

Note - the Kokako as a species is still extant, as the North Island subspecies is still around.
 
Where there's life there's hope:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6969226.stm

Rare dolphin 'sighted' in China

The critically endangered Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, has been sighted in eastern China, Chinese media report.

Scientists had recently declared that the baiji was probably extinct.

An international team of researchers spent six weeks looking for the creature last year without a single sighting.

But earlier this month the baiji was spotted and filmed by a local man, and confirmed by Chinese biologists, says official Xinhua news agency.

"I never saw such a big thing in the water before so I filmed it," Zeng Yujiang from Anhui Province told Xinhua.

"It was about 1,000 metres away and jumped out of the water several times."

Wang Kexiong from the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said experts from the institute had confirmed the footage was of a baiji.

Wang Ding, also from the Institute of Hydrobiology and a leading authority on the species, said that the sighting could not be confirmed 100% because of the distance, but that it looked and acted like a baiji.

Environmental degradation

Wang Ding said a team of scientists would visit the area to see if they could find the creature.

Although the sighting provides a small cause for hope that the creature could survive in the wild, the outlook is not good, says the BBC's East Asia editor Steve Jackson.

In the 1950s there were thousands of Yangtze River dolphins, but numbers have declined drastically due to industrial pollution, heavy river traffic and over-fishing.

A survey by researchers in 1997 found only 13.

If any wild baiji are found scientists will try to capture them and move them to a reserve where they would try to breed them if possible, Wang Ding said.

The last previous sighting of a wild baiji was in 2004, while the last captive baiji, Qi Qi, died in 2002.
 
Last Pinta giant tortoise Lonesome George dies

Staff at the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador say Lonesome George, a giant tortoise believed to be the last of its subspecies, has died.
Scientists estimate he was about 100 years old.
Park officials said they would carry out a post-mortem to determine the cause of his death.

With no offspring and no known individuals from his subspecies left, Lonesome George became known as the rarest creature in the world.
For decades, environmentalists unsuccessfully tried to get the Pinta Island tortoise to reproduce with females from a similar subspecies on the Galapagos Islands.

Park officials said the tortoise was found dead in his corral by his keeper of 40 years, Fausto Llerena.
While his exact age was not known, Lonesome George was estimated to be about 100, which made him a young adult as the subspecies can live up to an age of 200.

Lonesome George was first seen by a Hungarian scientist on the Galapagos island of Pinta in 1972.
Environmentalists had believed his subspecies (Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni) had become extinct.

Lonesome George became part of the Galapagos National Park breeding programme.
After 15 years of living with a female tortoise from the nearby Wolf volcano, Lonesome George did mate, but the eggs were infertile.

He also shared his corral with female tortoises from Espanola island, which are genetically closer to him than those from Wolf volcano, but Lonesome George failed to mate with them.

He became a symbol of the Galapagos Islands, which attract some 180,000 visitors a year.
Galapagos National Park officials said that with George's death, the Pinta tortoise subspecies has become extinct.
They said his body would probably be embalmed to conserve him for future generations.

Tortoises were plentiful on the Galapagos islands until the late 19th century, but were later hunted for their meat by sailors and fishermen to the point of extinction.
Their habitat furthermore suffered when goats were introduced from the mainland.

The differences in appearance between tortoises from different Galapagos islands were among the features which helped the British naturalist Charles Darwin formulate his theory of evolution.

Some 20,000 giant tortoises of other subspecies still live on the Galapagos.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18574279
 
Lonesome George: Does the death of a subspecies matter?
By Matt Bardo, Reporter, BBC Nature

Lonesome George, the last Pinta giant tortoise has died and his kind is now extinct. But if his genes live on in tortoise "relatives", how much does the loss of this subspecies matter?

"Usually we don't notice it.
"It happens, then we discover it, but it's too late then," says Lonesome George expert Henry Nicholls about the moment of extinction, something humanity almost never knowingly sees.

But for the last Pinta Island giant tortoise, named in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's rarest animal, it was different.

"George managed to string out a moment of extinction for 40 years in captivity," says Mr Nicholls, who wrote Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon.
"More than just a symbol for the Galapagos, Lonesome George was a symbol of our global never-ending struggle to preserve the richness and diversity and beauty of he planet we inherited," an open letter published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18604240

Long article, discusses species and sub-species distinction. Also discusses Manta Rays, Rats and Tigers, and 'Edge Species' (especially amphibians).
 
Extinction Rates Not as Bad as Feared ... for Now: Scientists Challenge Common Belief
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 150806.htm

The rate of species extinction may not be as bad as first thought, but recording of species is still a mammoth task. (Credit: Griffith University)
Jan. 24, 2013 — Concerns that many animals are becoming extinct, before scientists even have time to identify them, are greatly overstated, according Griffith University researcher, Professor Nigel Stork. Professor Stork has taken part in an international study, the findings of which have been detailed in "Can we name Earth's species before they go extinct?" published in the journal Science.

Deputy Head of the Griffith School of Environment, Professor Stork said a number of misconceptions have fueled these fears, and there is no evidence that extinction rates are as high as some have feared.

"Surprisingly, few species have gone extinct, to our knowledge. Of course, there will have been some species which have disappeared without being recorded, but not many we think," Professor Stork said.

Professor Stork said part of the problem is that there is an inflated sense of just how many animals exist and therefore how big the task to record them.

"Modern estimates of the number of eukaryotic species have ranged up to 100 million, but we have estimated that there are around 5 million species on the planet (plus or minus 3 million)."

And there are more scientists than ever working on the task. This contrary to a common belief that we are losing taxonomists, the scientists who identify species.

"While this is the case in the developed world where governments are reducing funding, in developing nations the number of taxonomists is actually on the rise.

"World-wide there are now two to three times as many taxonomist describing species as there were 20 years ago."

Even so, Professor Stork says the scale of the global taxonomic challenge is not to be underestimated.

"The task of identifying and naming all existing species of animals is still daunting, as there is much work to be done."

Other good news for the preservation of species is that conservation efforts in the past few years have done a good job in protecting some key areas of rich biodiversity.

But the reprieve may be short-lived.

"Climate change will dramatically change species survival rates, particularly when you factor in other drivers such as overhunting and habitat loss," Professor Stork said.

"At this stage we have no way of knowing by how much extinction rates may escalate.

"But once global warming exceeds the 2 degree barrier, we can expect to see the scale of loss many people already believe is happening. Higher temperature rises coupled with other environmental impacts will lead to mass extinctions"

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Griffith University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
 
monops said:
That's a very, very good question. I'd want to eradicate all extinctions that were caused, directly or indirectly, by humans, but maybe not the ones that would have happened naturally...but how do you find out which are which? And where do you draw the line?

I suppose I'm so upset by the fate of the baiji because it was known that it was endangered for ages, and that it was because of increasing traffic and pollution in its habitat, but nothing was done, and now it's too late. But you make a very good point, QuaziWashboard.

There's always the off-chance the Baiji will make its way BACK onto the critically endangered list, with another sighting from the odd 1 or 2 still paddling around the river shallows.
 
Zoo seeks mate for last surviving 'gorgeously ugly' fish
By Matt McGrath, Environment correspondent, BBC News

London Zoo is appealing to fish keepers to try to find a mate for a critically endangered, tropical species.
The Mangarahara cichlid is extinct in the wild but the three in captivity are all male.

Described as "gorgeously ugly", the Zoo is hoping to start a conservation programme if a fit female can be found for the captive males.
And with two of the males now 12 years old, the quest is said to be extremely urgent.

These cichlids were named for the Mangarahara river in Madagascar where they were first found.
The construction of dams on the river caused the streams they lived in to dry up and the fish is now believed to be extinct in its natural habitat.

There are two males in captivity at London Zoo and another in Berlin. There had been a female in captivity at the German zoo but attempts to breed ended in disaster when the male killed her.
"It's a fairly common thing with cichlids," London Zoo's aquarium curator Brain Zimmerman told BBC News.

"They are unusual fish compared to many in that they practise pair bonding and parental care of the eggs and the fry, so there's a lot of tussling that goes on between them."

Having carried out a search with other aquariums around the world and failed to find a mate for their bachelor boys, the team at ZSL are now hoping that someone may have a female in a private collection.

According to Brian Zimmerman, if you have one you're likely to know it.
"They are not a particularly beautiful fish, they are gorgeously ugly, they are unusual. They are more a connoisseur's type of fish. They need quite a bit of space, the males are bigger than your hand, and they need a decent tank," he added.

Given the age profile of the London males and the failure to find a mate in the world's zoos, Brian Zimmerman is not very confident for the future of the species.
"I'm not very hopeful. This fresh water fish crisis is huge worldwide and as water becomes diverted for human use it becomes scarcer and fish generally lose out," he said.
"I think there's probably a very slim to no chance of this fish surviving
."

London Zoo is asking anyone with information about female cichlids to email the team at [email protected]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22468206
 
Don't listen to them, Mr Mangarahara, you look like a perfectly decent fish to me.
 
Corn bunting disappears from Barra and Vatersay

A farmland bird is thought to have vanished from parts of the Western Isles and is facing extinction in other areas, RSPB Scotland has warned.
For the first time since monitoring for corn bunting calls began, the birds have not been heard on Barra or Vatersay.
One territorial male has been spotted on Benbecula.
The RSPB said parts of the Uists were now the last strongholds of the buntings in the Western Isles.

Corn buntings, which are also known as the fat bird of the barley, are an RSPB red list species having suffered "dramatic population decline" across the UK.
RSPB manager Jamie Boyle said: "For the first time ever, spring-time in the machair of Barra and Vatersay has been marked without the distinctive rattling song of the corn bunting.
"Since time immemorial this wee brown bird has been a familiar sight and sound to crofters going about their business.
"We are gravely concerned that this may not be the case in the future."

The RSPB is planning to take emergency action to conserve bunting hot spots on the islands.
Modern agriculture has been blamed for depriving the birds of winter food.
Falling numbers of corn buntings have been observed for a number of years.

Variations in the songs of different groups of buntings in the Western Isles have helped scientists to chart the decline in numbers.
By studying the pattern of male birds' songs, researchers can identify different groups of buntings.

In the past males could find enough mates within their own groups.
But Aberystwyth University scientists reported last year that the dialect groups were beginning to mix together suggesting males were flying further to find mates.

In August last year, RSPB Scotland said only 800 breeding pairs of corn bunting were believed to remain in Scotland.
The charity said an Aberdeenshire population had declined from 134 pairs to only 12 over a 20-year period.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-h ... s-23552933
 
Yes, and it could probably do with a bit of company too, take it's mind off things.
 
Gin company steps in to save Sussex juniper
4:00am Tuesday 21st January 2014

Juniper, one of Britain’s oldest plants, is the key ingredient to one of the nation’s favourite drinks – gin and tonic.
However the gin-giving plant faces extinction in Sussex due to excessive rabbit grazing and a lack of habitat – leaving just a handful of them left in our countryside.

It’s also under threat from the new and deadly Phytophthora austrocedrae disease, which infects the plant through its roots and causes foliage reduction and death.

To help save the tiny surviving population of juniper plants on Steyning Coombe, drinks manufacturer No.3 London Dry Gin has given a £1,000 grant to Steyning Downland Scheme – a charity which cares for the plants at the site near Lancing.
The charity is working with international organisation Plantlife to help protect the plants and will use the cash to build protective fencing around the remaining few in the county.

Tim Wilkins, species recovery coordinator at Plantlife, said: “Juniper has been steadily declining over the last few decades and without action now, it actually faces extinction across West Sussex and much of lowland England within 50 years.
“Such a calamity would represent more than the loss of a single plant type – it supports more than 40 species of insect and fungus that cannot survive without it.
“Plantlife has launched various juniper conservation projects across the UK but, especially with this new disease threat, we’re absolutely thrilled that No.3 is bolstering our efforts in these ways.”

It is thought the remaining plants near Lancing are the only of their kind in the whole of West and East Sussex.
The Sussex Wildlife Trust said the last record it held of a juniper plant in East Sussex dated back to a single plant in Hadlow Down, near Uckfield, in 2008, and in Ringmer in 2001.
A spokeswoman said: “They were single plants which were probably planted so they wouldn’t have been able to breed.”

Despite this, No.3 London Dry Gin hopes its cash injection will preserve juniper’s future in West Sussex.
Mike Mackenzie, of No.3, said: “Juniper is very much at the heart of No.3, so it’s appropriate that we support Plantlife’s activities in these ways.
"Their work in this area of conservation is second to none and we’re hopeful of healthy days ahead for West Sussex’s juniper.”

http://www.theargus.co.uk/NEWS/10950155 ... r/?ref=rss

See also:
'Rare' Lizard juniper plant reintroduction hope by conservationists
By Chris Ellis, BBC News Online, South West

Conservationists hope to save an "extremely rare" plant which is only found in the wild in the UK in one valley in Cornwall.

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-25402202
 
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert, review
The havoc humans have wreaked on our fellow species may be our undoing
By Philip Hoare
6:00PM GMT 11 Mar 2014

In the aftermath of the recent storms that have done so much to reshape the soft coast of southern England, I found a dead guillemot on the beach. It had died, like hundreds of others, from a combination of exhaustion, hunger and the unseen effects of pollution. As it lay there in the shingle, with its plump white belly and black back, stubby wings and leathery webbed feet, it resembled a northern penguin; an exotic bit of flotsam washed ashore from some far ocean, rather than the English Channel.

In one of the most affecting chapters in her remarkable book, American journalist Elizabeth Kolbert brings us face to face with the guillemot’s long lost relative: the great auk. During its brief acquaintance with humans – from the 16th century to the mid 19th – the auk, the original “penguin”, was so numerous that large flocks thronged entire outcrops of Iceland and Newfoundland.

These flightless birds, like the dodos, were ready for the taking, providing meat and mattress stuffing. “You do not give yourself the trouble of killing them,” reported an English sailor, “but lay hold of one and pluck the best… You then turn the poor penguin adrift, with his skin half naked and torn off, to perish at his leisure.” :(

The last hapless auk perished one June evening in 1844, strangled by Icelandic hunters. It joined a long line of animals driven to extinction by man, a line that is getting longer than the queue for a secret concert by Prince. By the latest estimation, one third of reef corals, one third of freshwater molluscs, one third of sharks and rays, a fifth of all reptiles, a quarter of all mammals and a sixth of all birds will go the way of the auk this century.

Oddly enough, extinction is a relatively new concept as far as humans are concerned – contemporaneous, ironically, with the Industrial Revolution that triggered our current period of global warming. It wasn’t until the 1790s that the French naturalist Georges Cuvier began to consider the provenance of fossilised megafaunas, wondering why these large beasts no longer stalked the Earth. By 1800, Cuvier had assembled a “fossil zoo” of 23 species that had existed in “a world previous to ours”.

Such evidence of mass extinction was slow to find supporters. Even Darwin was equivocal: “As we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world!” It wasn’t until the 1970s, when an American geologist, Walter Alvarez, found a narrow clay layer in the strata of an Italian hilltop, that the cause of the last great extinction was confirmed: a giant asteroid ended the Cretaceous period – and killed three quarters of all known species.

“The worst day ever on planet Earth” also gave us our evolutionary chance. “The reason this book is being written by a hairy biped, rather than a scaly one, has more to do with dinosaurian misfortune than with any particular mammalian virtue.”

Now, in our new era of the Anthropocene, we apes have used our skills to wreak havoc, despite the fact that our “great works” will be reduced to a future sedimentary layer the thickness of a cigarette paper.

Kolbert is a witty, deft writer with an eye for vivid colour. She takes us from sun-blistered desert islands on the Great Barrier Reef to the sopping Peruvian jungle, where she joins her guides chewing coca leaves to sustain her Andean trudge. But her most urgent warning is about the condition of our oceans.

Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the carbon dioxide absorbed by the sea has increased by 30 per cent. The specific result of this is to prevent calcifiers – animals from corals to bivalves, and even some plants – from forming their structures, with disastrous effects for the marine food chain. The acidifying oceans mean that all coral reefs – which support up to nine million other species – will have dissolved within 50 years. Does that matter? It depends on what value you place on our world.

Natural history – from moas to the great whales, from Neanderthals to Hawaiian crows – bears witness to our voracious dominion, and shows how we have sowed the seeds of our own destruction. Kolbert concludes with a quote from the ecologist Paul Ehrlich: “In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches.” Hers is a deadly message, delivered in elegant prose, and we can’t afford to ignore it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/book ... eview.html
 
For unknown reasons, 120,000 saiga antelopes have dropped dead in the last two weeks. That seems to be around 50% of the world's population of them. The affected herds also seem to have had a 100% mortality rate. It's actually rather scary.

Wow that is freaky. Seems from the article that they are prone to 'die-backs' periodically but this is exceptional.
 
Out of curiosity, I just calculated how often one antelope needed to die for these numbers to fit. Assuming 120,000 antelopes in two weeks, you'd need one antelope to die every 10 seconds. Has there ever been any disease or poison that could kill like that?
 
Out of curiosity, I just calculated how often one antelope needed to die for these numbers to fit. Assuming 120,000 antelopes in two weeks, you'd need one antelope to die every 10 seconds. Has there ever been any disease or poison that could kill like that?
Nerve gas.
 
For unknown reasons, 120,000 saiga antelopes have dropped dead in the last two weeks. That seems to be around 50% of the world's population of them. The affected herds also seem to have had a 100% mortality rate. It's actually rather scary.

More on this die-off and the apparent cause(s) ...

Around half of the world's critically endangered Saiga antelope have died suddenly in Kazakhstan since 10 May.

An unknown environmental trigger is thought to have caused two types of normally benign bacteria found in the antelopes' gut to turn deadly.

The animals die within hours of showing symptoms, which include depression, diarrhoea and frothing at the mouth. ...

SOURCE: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32958032
 
I was saddened to read in the paper at the weekend that this year's urban blue tit population have only resulted in a 10% breeding success and nobody knows why. I really like seeing those wee guys out and about and the thought that the nation's cutest birds may be dying out is pretty terrible.
 
I was saddened to read in the paper at the weekend that this year's urban blue tit population have only resulted in a 10% breeding success and nobody knows why. I really like seeing those wee guys out and about and the thought that the nation's cutest birds may be dying out is pretty terrible.

I don't want to give you a "like" for this news. That's so sad - one of those little guys is having lunch with me every day - I have lunch at the same time each day and he just appears out of nowhere.

What's the source of the news GNC?
 
Four UK bird species including puffins 'face extinction'

Puffins are among four UK bird species now at risk of extinction, according to the latest revision of a global conservation database.
Atlantic puffins, European turtle doves, Slavonian grebes and pochards are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species for birds.
This means the number of UK species on the critical list has doubled to eight.
Another 14 UK species are considered to be "near threatened".

Martin Harper, conservation director with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), said the "global wave of extinction is now lapping at our shores".
"The erosion of the UK's wildlife is staggering and this is reinforced when you talk about puffin and turtle dove now facing the same level of extinction threat as African elephant and lion, and being more endangered than the humpback whale," he said.

Although the Atlantic puffin population is still in the millions, fewer young birds are surviving to breed.
This has led to them being listed as vulnerable to extinction, the lowest of three categories behind critically endangered and endangered.

A decline in turtle dove numbers across Europe of more than 30% in the past 16 years has also made it vulnerable to extinction.

UK birds that have been added to the near-threatened list include oystercatchers, lapwings, the curlew sandpiper and bar-tailed godwit.
They join species already listed such as the black-tailed godwit and curlew.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34664385

The world is in a bad state, in so many ways. I'm old, but I pity the young who'll have to live through the changes and turmoil to come. One finite planet, now moving rapidly into the anthropocene... :(
 
Four UK bird species including puffins 'face extinction'

Puffins are among four UK bird species now at risk of extinction, according to the latest revision of a global conservation database.
Atlantic puffins, European turtle doves, Slavonian grebes and pochards are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species for birds.
This means the number of UK species on the critical list has doubled to eight.
Another 14 UK species are considered to be "near threatened".

Martin Harper, conservation director with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), said the "global wave of extinction is now lapping at our shores".
"The erosion of the UK's wildlife is staggering and this is reinforced when you talk about puffin and turtle dove now facing the same level of extinction threat as African elephant and lion, and being more endangered than the humpback whale," he said.

Although the Atlantic puffin population is still in the millions, fewer young birds are surviving to breed.
This has led to them being listed as vulnerable to extinction, the lowest of three categories behind critically endangered and endangered.

A decline in turtle dove numbers across Europe of more than 30% in the past 16 years has also made it vulnerable to extinction.

UK birds that have been added to the near-threatened list include oystercatchers, lapwings, the curlew sandpiper and bar-tailed godwit.
They join species already listed such as the black-tailed godwit and curlew.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34664385

The world is in a bad state, in so many ways. I'm old, but I pity the young who'll have to live through the changes and turmoil to come. One finite planet, now moving rapidly into the anthropocene... :(
:( The unique puffin could go the way of its relative, the great auk.
 
Four UK bird species including puffins 'face extinction'

Puffins are among four UK bird species now at risk of extinction, according to the latest revision of a global conservation database.
Atlantic puffins, European turtle doves, Slavonian grebes and pochards are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species for birds.
This means the number of UK species on the critical list has doubled to eight.
Another 14 UK species are considered to be "near threatened".

Martin Harper, conservation director with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), said the "global wave of extinction is now lapping at our shores".
"The erosion of the UK's wildlife is staggering and this is reinforced when you talk about puffin and turtle dove now facing the same level of extinction threat as African elephant and lion, and being more endangered than the humpback whale," he said.

Although the Atlantic puffin population is still in the millions, fewer young birds are surviving to breed.
This has led to them being listed as vulnerable to extinction, the lowest of three categories behind critically endangered and endangered.

A decline in turtle dove numbers across Europe of more than 30% in the past 16 years has also made it vulnerable to extinction.

UK birds that have been added to the near-threatened list include oystercatchers, lapwings, the curlew sandpiper and bar-tailed godwit.
They join species already listed such as the black-tailed godwit and curlew.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34664385

The world is in a bad state, in so many ways. I'm old, but I pity the young who'll have to live through the changes and turmoil to come. One finite planet, now moving rapidly into the anthropocene... :(


Most depressing -- for sure, to me as a puffinophile. And for some years, we've been hearing about the precipitous decline of the turtle dove, at any rate as a British (summer-visiting) species.

On the River Exe estuary -- which I've been seeing a good deal of recently, with a close relative having moved to live down that way -- in wintertime one can hardly go there without all-but tripping over a few members of all the species listed in the last three lines of the above report (plus a couple of Slavonian grebes often hang around there too); but one recognises that that is, likely, a very lucky place -- with no guarantee of its remaining so, for keeps.
 
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