There have been several times in the past when the number of species going extinct merited the title of a great extinction, the end of the dinosaurs is probably the most famous.

But it’s happened in the past, and if we don’t find a way to stop it, it could very well happen again, and soon.

Nearly one-third of all known species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction, finds the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN, in the most recent update of its authoritative Red List of Threatened Species™ issued today.
The updated assessment shows that 17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed species are threatened with extinction.

“The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting,” warns Jane Smart, director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group.

The IUCN finds that 21 percent of all known mammals, 30 percent of all known amphibians, 12 percent of all known birds, and 28 percent of reptiles, 37 percent of freshwater fishes, 70 percent of plants, 35 percent of invertebrates assessed so far are at risk.

The thing is that this time it’s not an asteroid impact or massive volcanic eruption that’s causing the extinctions. It’s us. Which means we can do something about it, if we so choose.

Hard to imagine a tropical paradise without birds.

Hawaii’s native avian population is in peril, with nearly all the state’s birds in danger of becoming extinct, a federal report says.

One-third of the nation’s endangered birds are in Hawaii, said the report issued Thursday by the Interior Department. Thirty-one Hawaiian bird species are listed as endangered, more than anywhere else in the country.

“That is the epicenter of extinctions and near-extinctions,” said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which helped produce the study. “Hawaii is (a) borderline ecological disaster.”

The culprits are the usual suspects of habitat loss and invasive species. There’s a real challenge here, we know what’s happening and why, now the question is will we make the effort and commit the resources necessary to save Hawaii’s birds.

A couple of stories in the news provide a nice example of just how much we still have to learn about life on this planet of ours, and how quickly it can disappear.

First, the new.

A team of researchers from Australia and the United States have uncovered new marine life, including fiery red coral and purple-spotted sea anemones, in deep waters off the Australian state of Tasmania, according to findings released Sunday.

Scientists who took part in the $2 million four-week expedition also found that most reef-forming coral deeper than 4,200 feet (1,300 meters) in the area were newly dead. Researchers will study samples of the coral to try and determine whether the creatures are dying because of ocean warming, disease, a rise in ocean acidity or some other reason.

Second, the sad news about a species loved by people all over the world.

Lovelace, the rockhopper penguin that answers life’s questions in the animated film “Happy Feet”, probably would be just as stumped as the researchers who reported Friday that the population of his northern relatives has declined by 90 percent over the last 50 years.

The population of northern rockhopper penguins once reached into the millions, but now the largest colonies are estimated at between 32,000 to 65,000 pairs on Gough Island, and 40,000 to 50,000 pairs on Tristan da Cunha Island, according to a study in the journal Bird Conservation International.

Those two South Atlantic islands, which are British overseas territories, account for more than 80 percent of the total species population.

It’s a sad fact that much of wildlife research has become a race to find new species and identify them before they become extinct. That we live in such a world, where we for the most part both the discoverers of the species and cause of their extinction is the type of irony that’s generally reserved for classic Greek drama and Shakespearean plays. To see this dichotomy playing itself out in real life is indeed one of the great tragedies of our time.

In 1999, California’s Channel Island Fox was on the brink of oblivion. The species, found only on the Channel Islands, was down to fifteen individuals. Their impending demise was the result of several factors. Earlier in the century, their native habitat had been converted into grazing land for sheep, and farmers regarded the fox as pests. In addition, the use of DDT had rid the islands of bald eagles.

The loss of a competing predator might not seem like a bad thing, but bald eagles didn’t prey on fox pups. When the bald eagles died, their place was taken by golden eagles, who did prey on the fox pups. The results, for the fox, were devastating.

And so, an attempt was made to help the fox recover. The remaining foxes were rounded up and bred in captivity. Turning the Channel Islands into a national park led to restoring the natural habitat and the removal of sheep ranching. Bald eagles were re-introduced, and golden eagles chased away.

The result is being called the fastest ever recovery of an endangered species. Channel Island foxes now number over six hundred, and they once again roam freely over the islands.

It goes to show once again that the cause of saving endangered species is not a pipe dream, it can be done when people are determined enough to make it happen. It’s also a perfect example of how the Endangered Species Act is meant to work, and how successful it can be when politicians and corporate interests don’t get in the way.

To see a video of the Channel Island fox and the recovery program the has saved them from extinction, click here.

Why, when faced with changes to their environment, does one species survive while another fades into extinction? With global warming causing climate changes around the globe, that’s a question that researchers are faced with more and more often nearly every day.

The answers come in small bits and pieces, sometimes in unexpected places. Like, for example, this story of the fate of two kinds of penguins in New Zealand.

Researchers studying a rare and endangered species of penguin have uncovered a previously unknown species that disappeared about 500 years ago.
The research suggests that the first humans in New Zealand hunted the newly found Waitaha penguin to extinction by 1500, about 250 years after their arrival on the islands. But the loss of the Waitaha allowed another kind of penguin to thrive — the yellow-eyed species that now also faces extinction, Philip Seddon of Otago University, a co-author of the study, said Wednesday.

In a story from the 1970’s by science fiction writer Larry Niven a character remarks that human beings have had to learn to manage their planet’s ecology by nearly destroying it, and then building it back up again. In many ways, we’re in the midst of that process right now. Learning things like why one species survives a changing environment while another doesn’t is another big step along the way.

I had a friend in college who was crazy about frogs of all kinds. Somewhere out there, I hope she’s happy to hear this news.

A tiny frog species thought by many experts to be extinct has been rediscovered alive and well in a remote area of Australia’s tropical north, researchers said Thursday.

The 1.5 inch-long Armoured Mistfrog had not been seen since 1991, and many experts assumed it had been wiped out by a devastating fungus that struck northern Queensland state.

The black-footed ferret, which was once considered extinct until re-discovered in Wyoming in 1981, is in trouble once again.

On the grasslands a few miles from the pinnacles and spires of Badlands National Park, federal wildlife officials have been waging a war since spring to save one of the nation’s largest colonies of endangered black-footed ferrets.

The deadly disease sylvatic plague was discovered in May in a huge prairie dog town in the Conata Basin. The black-tailed prairie dog is the main prey of ferrets, and the disease quickly killed up to a third of the area’s 290 ferrets along with prairie dogs.

it’s always a danger that when a species population gets too small, a single danger like disease or a natural catastrophe can wipe them out in what amounts to an instant. Losing the black-footed ferret for good would be just one more step towards the day when places like the South Dakota Badlands are missing many of the creatures that made them special places to visit.

At least in the case of the ferrets, (prairie dogs aren’t as popular among local ranchers), there are people working to help save them from the possibility of extinction by plague. Let’s hope they succeed.

A couple of stories out this morning regarding gorillas and other primates are a classic example of the good news/bad news nature of what’s going on with threateneed species and their environments.

First, the bad news. It’s feared that half the world’s primates are in danger of going extinct.

Almost half of the world’s 634 types of primates are in danger of going extinct, some of them literally being hunted to death, experts said Monday after their first comprehensive review in five years.

The article doesn’t say whether or not we’re on that list

The better news is that a newly discovered population has doubled the estimate of the number of gorillas living in the wild.

Wildlife researchers said Tuesday that they’ve discovered 125,000 western lowland gorillas deep in the forests of the Republic of Congo, calling it a major increase in the animal’s estimated population.

The Wildlife Conservation Society, based at New York’s Bronx Zoo, and the Republic of Congo said their census counted the newly discovered gorillas in two areas of the northern part of the country covering 18,000 square miles.

125,000 is a serious number, the kind that can change the outlook for a species survival. it could even mean that, for a while at least, gorillas won’t be counted in with those of their cousins who are on the road to disappearing from this earth.

In a kind of story that’s becoming depressingly familiar, a recently discovered species of monkey is threatened with extinction before most people on the planet are even aware that it exists.

A monkey species discovered only three years ago could soon go extinct in its tiny forest home in Tanzania, say conservation scientists.

The kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji and also known as the Highland Mangabey) was discovered in 2005 in the Southern Highlands and Udzungwa Mountains in Tanzania. In 2006, genetic analyses revealed the species represented an entire new genus of primate — the first since 1923.

The culprits in this case appear to be logging and poachers. The Wildlife Conservation Society is attempting to drum up support for taking measures to save the kipunji, but it’s hard to launch a campaign in favor of an animal that most people don’t even know is there. It’s all to possible that by the time word gets around about the plight of these monkeys, loss of habitat and poachers will have already wiped them out. When it comes to wildlife conservation, that’s a sad fact of the world we live in today.

We’ve lost another one.

After five years of futile efforts to find or confirm sightings of any Caribbean monk seals — even just one — the U.S. government on Friday announced that the species is officially extinct and the only seal to vanish due to human causes.

“Humans left the Caribbean monk seal population unsustainable after overhunting them,” Kyle Baker, a biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this led to their demise and labels the species as the only seal to go extinct from human causes.”

The last time a Caribbean monk seal was seen was in 1952. There are still two populations of monk seals in the world, one in hawaii and the other in the Mediterrranean. Both are endangered, and their populations are declining. About the only hope from the extinction of the Caribbean monk seals is that it may lead to greater protections and support for the seals near Hawaii and in the Mediterranean. If not, monk seals will soon be entirely gone.