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"To evolve or not to evolve, that is the question" - William Darwin
U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
11–20 of 243 posts
Re: U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
#12This is super depressing, it's crazy to see how much the flora/fauna have changed locally in my lifetime. It makes me wonder how much worse it actually is. Is looks like most of these were initially listed in the 80s, not too long after Endangered Species Act passed. Is there some sort of time limit before they officially declare something extinct?
I’m appalled by the housing codes (PLU in French). They do require to estimate and compensate the fauna and flora, by providing other shelters in another forrest for example, or manually
moving individuals (butterflies, birds).
But it will never be the same! Maybe that land was in the middle of a communication axis, maybe it had the right fungus. If you move all the species around, it’s like when you move all the humans around: They become unrooted, and, ultimately, stress on their lives shows up as obesity or as socially disordered!
We need to stop colonizing more land. We need to limit population in a country.
Re: U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
#13I like to think that the Hawaiian practice of using native bird feathers for large and elaborate cloaks might let us pursue de-extinction through DNA extraction and cloning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBAhu_%CA%BBula
Just think about how many individual birds' feathers contributed towards making these. And we know plenty of the yellow feathers are from the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird which was declared extinct. The Kauaʻi Akialoa was also declared extinct and they had yellow feathers too. There could even be feathers from species that went extinct before being cataloged by science. There is so much potential in this area, yet I don't know if there are any proposals to attempt DNA extraction or try to examine feathers and determine which species each came from.
Edit: This is food for thought and I'm in no way advocating we do any less to prevent extinctions today. I just like having the hope that future generations might be able to bring a few species back.
Re: U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
#14This is super depressing, it's crazy to see how much the flora/fauna have changed locally in my lifetime. It makes me wonder how much worse it actually is. Is looks like most of these were initially listed in the 80s, not too long after Endangered Species Act passed. Is there some sort of time limit before they officially declare something extinct?
How come they don’t investigate WHAT is actually causing this exactly? Yes climate is changing but did it change that much since 80s? What if it’s some pesticide? or some food packaging or something
From the article it sounds like invasive species, plus the fact that we have royally screwed up the local ecosystem.
For instance — white-tailed deer are growing exponentially, eating all the underbrush and outcompeting other animals, and they have no/few natural predators left.
I agree that not much has changed since the 80s, I think it's just catching up to us now.
Re: U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
#15This is super depressing, it's crazy to see how much the flora/fauna have changed locally in my lifetime. It makes me wonder how much worse it actually is. Is looks like most of these were initially listed in the 80s, not too long after Endangered Species Act passed. Is there some sort of time limit before they officially declare something extinct?
How come they don’t investigate WHAT is actually causing this exactly? Yes climate is changing but did it change that much since 80s? What if it’s some pesticide? or some food packaging or something
> What if it’s some pesticide? or some food packaging or something
What if it was? I don't expect things to change much with corporate's death grip on the government.
Re: U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
#16This is super depressing, it's crazy to see how much the flora/fauna have changed locally in my lifetime. It makes me wonder how much worse it actually is. Is looks like most of these were initially listed in the 80s, not too long after Endangered Species Act passed. Is there some sort of time limit before they officially declare something extinct?
With the current development in climate change and resource exploitation, one can expect this to be the tip of the iceberg.
Re: U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
#17Someday we’re going to hit the cascade point, where we’ve simultaneously and severely damaged or disrupted so many ecosystems that they won’t be able to recover and it all just collapses.
Re: U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
#18From the standpoint of understandig molecular biology and evolution, this is just basically burning the Library of Alexandria to keep yourself warm for a few days. This is unique information being lost forever.
Many of these species were considered done for by the time they were listed. The tools we have to rehabilitate our ecology from the brink of near total destruction really only came online in the late 60s through the 70s and it's taken time for them to be effective, but they have been in a lot of ways, whether it is the ESA, CWA, NEPA, etc.
Re: U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
#19I like to think that the Hawaiian practice of using native bird feathers for large and elaborate cloaks might let us pursue de-extinction through DNA extraction and cloning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBAhu_%CA%BBula Just think about how many individual birds' feathers contributed towards making these. And we know plenty of the yellow feathers are from the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird which was declared extinct. The Kauaʻ…
I love that the answer is always more technology will save us. Whether it's carbon removal advances or cloning, we just look towards future advancements instead of cleaning up our act.
I understand that expecting some sort of big shift in how we live is not feasible, it's just a shame.
Re: U.S. declares more than 20 species extinct after exhaustive searches
#20I have a flat pigtoe in my aquarium. What should I do?