US Officials Report More Than 20 Extinctions (nytimes.com) 86
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The ivory-billed woodpecker, which birders have been seeking in the bayous of Arkansas, is gone forever, according to federal officials. So is the Bachman's warbler, a yellow-breasted songbird that once migrated between the Southeastern United States and Cuba. The song of the Kauai O'o, a Hawaiian forest bird, exists only on recordings. And there is no longer any hope for several types of freshwater mussels that once filtered streams and rivers from Georgia to Illinois. In all, 22 animals and one plant should be declared extinct and removed from the endangered species list, federal wildlife officials announced on Wednesday.
"Each of these 23 species represents a permanent loss to our nation's natural heritage and to global biodiversity," said Bridget Fahey, who oversees species classification for the Fish and Wildlife Service. "And it's a sobering reminder that extinction is a consequence of human-caused environmental change." The extinctions include 11 birds, eight freshwater mussels, two fish, a bat and a plant. Many of them were likely extinct, or almost so, by the time the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973, officials and advocates said, so perhaps no amount of conservation would have been able to save them. "The Endangered Species Act wasn't passed in time to save most of these species," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit group. "It's a tragedy." Since the passage of the Endangered Species Act, "54 species in the United States have been removed from the endangered list because their populations recovered, while another 48 have improved enough to move from endangered to threatened," adds the report. "So far, 11 listed species have been declared extinct."
"Each of these 23 species represents a permanent loss to our nation's natural heritage and to global biodiversity," said Bridget Fahey, who oversees species classification for the Fish and Wildlife Service. "And it's a sobering reminder that extinction is a consequence of human-caused environmental change." The extinctions include 11 birds, eight freshwater mussels, two fish, a bat and a plant. Many of them were likely extinct, or almost so, by the time the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973, officials and advocates said, so perhaps no amount of conservation would have been able to save them. "The Endangered Species Act wasn't passed in time to save most of these species," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit group. "It's a tragedy." Since the passage of the Endangered Species Act, "54 species in the United States have been removed from the endangered list because their populations recovered, while another 48 have improved enough to move from endangered to threatened," adds the report. "So far, 11 listed species have been declared extinct."
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Fucking hell you're stupid.
It doesn't matter how mundane you think a species is, evolution doesn't happen in isolation, it happens as part of a bigger system, and when one part of the system breaks, other parts do too.
A single mussel filters a bathtub of water a day, no one gives a fuck how hard you find them to get off your boat. They, like most species, are in decline, so no they don't simply get replaced; if they were replaceable as was they wouldn't have evolved into a distinct species. They're essential for water quality, and if water quality declines because oysters and mussels no longer filter it, then the ability for other species like fish to survive declines - you know, a major human food source.
Without genetic diversity ecosystems become vulnerable to collapse.
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" This is why no one pays attention to you enviroqueers, your logic is all screwed up and you are playing an obvious agenda."
You're stupid.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/s... [pbs.org]
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These guys have such sad lives that the only joy they get is imagining that they are making "libtards" and "SJWs" sad.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
I think we should pass a constitutional amendment banning environmental regulation with the caveat that if any environmental degradation occurs then the management team of the offending company will be fed feet first through a wood chipper
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Was the homophobic slur really necessary to make your point?
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Was the homophobic slur really necessary to make your point?
It is for the OP. At the risk of sliding into an ad hominem, it does illustrate where the OP comes from when forming his/her arguments. The OP's arguments aren't made out of an objective, scientific interest, but out of identity and rancor.
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Not sure if autist or 12 year old.
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See... nobody cares anymore.
So what if he's homo. Probably gets more sex than you ever will.
Nobody likes to bang a racist. (Aka somebody who still believes in "races", a literal century since it was shown to be pseudo-science like aether theory.)
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Now if the anti-science left would just recognize that we could get some place.
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Doesn't evolution require extinctions?
Isn't that the whole point of natural selection?
Isn't occasional collapse a natural part of selection?
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Evolution of species due to natural selection seems to require the extinction of certain species. I mean, could humans ever have evolved as a product of natural selection if dinosaurs hand not been selected against?
And how does a reduction in species reduce our food sources? Can't we just make more of the species we like to eat (chicken, pig, cow), and give them more habitat for cultivation as we rip out the western titmouse, or passenger pigeon, or any number of other species that we don't think are tast
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Doesn't evolution require extinctions? Isn't that the whole point of natural selection? Isn't occasional collapse a natural part of selection?
The thing which is missed in many of these discussions is that the impact of these extinctions on human society is the primary concern. 90% of species could go extinct in the next few centuries and the planet will be fine. We have had five mass extinctions killing over 70% of species and one of them killed over 90%. But life lived on. Mass extinctions are not a part of natural selection, but evolution can cope with them when conditions for mass extinction arise. As long as conditions for life exist somewher
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I'm not sure if the "will almost certainly hurt the planet's ability to sustain billions of humans" is a given. In fact, given that most humans probably only depend on local species, and local species are a fraction of world wide species, there's actually no real reason to assume that biodiversity universally improves human outcomes - in fact, it seems that we thrive in many ways by eliminating biodiversity, and enhancing the survivability of specific species that are important to us - like cattle, chicken
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I'm not sure if the "will almost certainly hurt the planet's ability to sustain billions of humans" is a given. In fact, given that most humans probably only depend on local species, and local species are a fraction of world wide species, there's actually no real reason to assume that biodiversity universally improves human outcomes
While biodiversity has a range of benefits for humans, drug discovery is probably the easiest to explain and understand. It is estimated that humans lose the ability to discover one important drug every two years [nih.gov] because of the current rate of species extinction. And it isn't just a better version of Viagra we are giving up in the future, it could new antibiotics used to combat antibiotic resistant bacteria. And even if you don't understand exactly why this is a problem, it should be enough to just know t
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Drug discovery is very novel, wouldn't you agree? Our ability to sustain *more* billions of humans could arguably be impacted by the lack of discovery of some miracle drug, but the lack of that discovery doesn't threaten us - that's merely opportunity cost.
Would you agree that such benign collaboration, if limited to only those things we could come to a consen
Ulterior motive? (Score:2)
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Time for you to go extinct then. The world will be a better place without people like you.
Before that... go read up on the benefits of Bio-diversity.
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Unless, in a parallel universe, the white in the beak contains molecules that kill cancer cells.
Sounds crazy, but think of it like this: 40% +/- of medicines behind the pharmacy counter are derived from plants. Approximately 137 species of life forms are driven to extinction daily in the world's tropical rainforests due to anthropogenic deforestation.
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And even it it did in this one what does it matter unless someone discovered it?
Nothing. But no one can discover it if they are gone, which nobody should have to explain to you.
And it better hope it died out instead of being a cure for cancer because if it was, Monsanto or Pfizer or somebody would catch all of them and put them in breeding programs to harvest their beaks. What kind of life is that for a woodpecker?
No, they would make a synthetic form which they could patent all over the world and profit from. What are you, new?
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tell that to the horseshoe crab...
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, more like a 100% of the medicines are derived from nature.
There was an AMA with people who do research at pharma companies, a couple of years back.
The only things that aren't, are things like pure lithium, or things derived from what's in our own bodies, which counts as nature too.
The pharma guys agreed, that what they do is mostly go to some jungle or whatnot and ask the witch doctors for interesting plants/animals/stuff they know, then go to the lab, extract it, purify it, and then... well, you can't patent that. ... so they just randomly stick on different molecule endings, and put them in lab animals to see what it changes. They said they literally have no idea what they are doing. It's just a game of luck. And if the side-effects got better or the effects stronger, they patent it and sell it. If the side-effects start to dominate, they call that the main effect and sell it too. Viagra being a prime example here. It was originally created to raise blood pressure, but hat a very peculiar side-effect ;)
Don't get me wrong: I don't have a problem with them just trying things without knowing what they're doing. I have a problem with them acting like you should never trust in nature and only trust in their "research" and expensive white powders.
There's a sane middle-way: Extract the original active substance, and dilute or concentrate it so you get a reliable dosage and a good effect. Because that's the only problem with plants: You don't get a consistent dosage. Which means one plant may give you nothing, and on the next you take more, and then you overdose. (In 99% of cases, you'll be very careful and hence it will do almost nothing, so you take a bit more from the same batch, and for the next batch you need to start at very low dosages again to be safe. Except when it's e.g. barbiturates, where that safe zone is so small that it takes a special profession to not kill half the patients.)
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Trump lost, get over it, righty.
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Compare the ones you see to a pileated woodpecker. They are very similar to an ivory bill.
Then if you are still sure it is an ivory bill, take lots of pictures and send them to Fish and Wildlife.
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And for those who say "Why are they called a different species if they are so simiilar?":
They can't breed and get children that aren't sterile.
That's pretty much the definition of a species.
I learned that about a year or two ago.
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Almost certainly a common woodpecker, also an impressively sized woodpecker that is very common throughout the Southern and Eastern US, across Canada, and down the US West Coast.
If you had ivory-billed woodpeckers in your back yard you could make a fortune charging birders to sit on your back porch.
Can Slashdot implement a filter (Score:5, Interesting)
that allows us to just not show paywall bullshit? I come here because it's a news aggregator not because I only want to read summaries.
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May I suggest automatic replacement by a free link?
If necessary, a mirrored copy on some less official server.
Just curious (Score:2)
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Species don't just pop up though, so it's not that simple.
Everything mutates all the time. You can see that in COVID.
But it only becomes a new species, when it can not breed with the original species anymore and have offspring that can breed too. That's an arbitrary definition, but it's the official one AFAIK. (Source: Professional biologist.)
And right now, the rate of change in the environment is orders of magnitude beyond the rate of adaptation caused by mutation plus selection. That's why we see extincti
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Yes, there is research focused on speciation (the creation of new species) and the human effect on this. From the fossil record about three new species are created each year [nih.gov]. We also natural lose around 10% of species every million years [ourworldindata.org].
While the rate of species extinction today is 10's to 100's of times greater than the average over the past 10 million years [nature.com], we are also creating new species at a much greater rate. It is possible that we are creating new species at a similar rate that we are destroying sp [theatlantic.com]
Re: Just curious (Score:1)
Sorta late to the party (Score:5, Informative)
They're declaring these plants and animals extinct now...
But the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was last seen in 1944.
The Kauai nukupuu (another bird) was last seen in _1899_.
With only one exception, of the 23 bird, plant, and animal species they're talking about, none of them have been seen for over thirty years.
Most of the eleven bird species were apparently killed off by mosquito-borne avian malaria in Hawaii.
Re:Sorta late to the party (Score:4, Informative)
Even the summary says many of them were likely extinct over 50 years ago
"The extinctions include 11 birds, eight freshwater mussels, two fish, a bat and a plant. Many of them were likely extinct, or almost so, by the time the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973, officials and advocates said, so perhaps no amount of conservation would have been able to save them."
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Even the summary says many of them were likely extinct over 50 years ago
"The extinctions include 11 birds, eight freshwater mussels, two fish, a bat and a plant. Many of them were likely extinct, or almost so, by the time the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973, officials and advocates said, so perhaps no amount of conservation would have been able to save them."
It is an official acknowledgement that those species are gone.
Efforts had been made to find living members of the species in this list, without success. So an official confirmation is just that, we confirmed that decades of fruitless searches are an objective indication that the species are gone forever.
Now, this doesn't preclude a miracle re-discovery in the future. For example, Species can go undetected for long enough to appear extinct just to be rediscovered.
For example, the Lord Howe Island stick [wikipedia.org]
Carlin called it anyway (Score:2)
They're declaring these plants and animals extinct now...
But the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was last seen in 1944.
The Kauai nukupuu (another bird) was last seen in _1899_.
With only one exception, of the 23 bird, plant, and animal species they're talking about, none of them have been seen for over thirty years.
Most of the eleven bird species were apparently killed off by mosquito-borne avian malaria in Hawaii.
George Carlin used to do a pretty good skit on people that want to save the planet [youtube.com]. One of the objects of his ire was the concern over extinctions, and how people make way too big a deal about them. And I always thought "The Earth + Plastic" would make a good bumper sticker for those that got the joke.
Re:Carlin called it anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
They're declaring these plants and animals extinct now...
But the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was last seen in 1944.
The Kauai nukupuu (another bird) was last seen in _1899_.
With only one exception, of the 23 bird, plant, and animal species they're talking about, none of them have been seen for over thirty years.
Most of the eleven bird species were apparently killed off by mosquito-borne avian malaria in Hawaii.
George Carlin used to do a pretty good skit on people that want to save the planet [youtube.com]. One of the objects of his ire was the concern over extinctions, and how people make way too big a deal about them. And I always thought "The Earth + Plastic" would make a good bumper sticker for those that got the joke.
No, he didn't, and you citing him doesn't make it so. Carlin was a brilliant comedian who spoke hard truths, but also his gimmick was to repeat a punch line in such a way to appear as a common-sense truth, for laughs and effects.
Yes, the species have been gone for a long time. But that doesn't mean people weren't looking for it, hoping for a miracle re-discovery (think Lord Howe Island stick insect, which was thought to be extinct for almost 90 years, till it was discovered it survived on a lone, rocky island.)
This is an official acknowledgement that says, "based on strong empirical evidence, we conclude these species are truly extinct and not just undetected."
I really don't see what's wrong with drawing a conclusion based on strong empirical evidence and putting it in writing for environmental policy purposes.
Reducing this to a punch line is just for-shit-and-giggles nihilism pretending to be no-nonsense realism.
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Carlin has a good point. The vast majority of species that ever existed are extinct and the planet has gone through several cataclysmic events in the past that have resulted in mass extinctions. Even if humanity fucked up the planet in ways far worse than even the gravest predictions have suggested possible, life would continue on. It's incredibly resilient. You could almost say it's in its DNA.
Yeah, that's a good point... with respect to what? It's not even on point to the topic at hand, which is the preservation of species contemporary to us that are at risk from loss of habitat, pollution, etc.
Something that is true can be what I call a TBU (true-but-useless.)
It's like, ok, a comedian says that 60% of all marine genera went extinct during the Permian-Triassic extinction event. Sure, it is true, but are we going to use it as a punch-line against efforts to preserve currently existing riverin
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But the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was last seen in 1944.
There is the possibility that species are just very rare and not quite extinct. This possibility still exists today as there have been numerous possible sightings since 1944. After 70 years of no official sightings despite better recording equipment like cameras on smartphones, it is simply more likely that they are really extinct. Of course, there could be one woodpecker out there protesting "I'm not dead . . . I'm getting better . . . I feel HAPPPY!"
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Wrong Python sketch. You are looking for the "Dead Parrot" sketch. "It's not dead, its only resting."
Dodos (Score:3)
And everyone's gotta have two computer monitors (with mostly unused space).
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Let's hope in the case of the "homo sapiens" pathogen, it does too.
We *do* have hydrogen nukes and gene drives, after all. ;)
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"Pandemic schmandemic. These have been happening to people as long as there have been people."
"Today's nuclear war isn't news. Nuclear weapons were in use as far back as 1945."
"Moon landing, whatever. Humans set foot on Earth longer ago than that."
"Aww, your mother died. Boo hoo, lots of peoples' mothers have died."
Re:This is nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
And everybody dies. That doesn't mean it's OK for someone to murder you, or that serial killing is as harmless as stamp collecting.
Re:This is nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but only five times have over 90% gone in less than 10k years. Never in only a few 100 years like right now.
And make no mistake: Apex predators always go first! Take a wild guess what we humans are!
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Says the guy who attempts to enter an argument-based discussion with a ... personal attack.
But hey, at least you showed us, that you either don't know what the word "fact" means, or don't know how the scientific method works.
You literally made zero arguments in your comment. So there isn't even anything to refute. And I'm sorry, I'm not playing that game that stupid people play because it's all they got, where they spew non-arguments to put the other one into a defensive role, let him and his awareness of h
I need to correct this: (Score:2)
Aactually, of all mass-extinctions, I think only one had over 90% of all life go extinct.
I'm sorry I said that. 5 times over 90% was simply wrong.
So take my comment as more of an emotional general sentiment.
The emotional argument still holds.
The precise numbers that will still back the argument up, are to be found elsewhere.
Out with the old, in with the new? (Score:1)
I'm having trouble being concerned about this. It seems more often that there are reports of new species being discovered than that are going extinct.
These dozens of species came from somewhere. Who can say that they aren't being replaced at least as quickly as they are being lost? Sure, this area of that loses biodiversity close to heavily-populated areas. Well, duh. I'm more surprised with the number of creatures that choose to stick around some of these crap heaps we call cities... But the portion of the
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I can say.
I literally see it.
The place where I volunteer is turning into a dry steppe in the next 20 years.
Nothing here can handle that dryness.
The life from further down south can. And our species could live more up north. But from a certain point on in the south, it's just gonna be desert. (Hint: Most of America will become like your southern states or Mexico.)
And at a certain point, there just isn't any more north to go to. E.g. polar bears *need* ice shelves. Can't go anywhere if they go away.
Sure, brow
Anything fluffy and cuddly among them? (Score:1)
Else, nobody gives a fuck.
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It's their own fault for being delicious.
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That's what they said about anchovies before we learned of their industrial applications.
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What grand tech runs off anchovies?
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No, you got that wrong: Them going extinct means we can never eat a delicious ivory-billed woodpecker again!
This must be stopped!
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The early bird gets the worm
It's only the tip of the iceberg. (Score:2)
And only the beginning.
Since the 80s, already 70% of all butterfly species are extinct.
It will be the biggest extinction event in the planet's history.
And we will be *lucky* if we ourselves will go extinct early! Because then at least the other species may have a chance.
Anyone who denies the mass-extinctions and keeps on going like before, is like a concentration camp oven operator raised to the power of itself. Not just extincting whole peoples, but entire *species*!
And I will treat them accordingly. Like
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Re:It's only the tip of the iceberg - not really. (Score:2)
A nonexistent iceberg, in this case.
No, "70% of all butterfly species" have NOT gone extinct.
Very few butterfly species have gone extinct in recorded history.
The biggest problem that causes extinctions is from competing "alien" populations trying to fill the same niche, or diseases passed on from migration (yes, some of that migration is human-caused).
nostalgia (Score:2)
I'm sorry for all these losses, but for me nothing compares to the memory of the sweet song of the red breasted tit booby. May it rest in peace.
There are two culprits (Score:2)
Spraying roundup that decimates non crop plants the species depend on for food and smart growth policies that replace habitat land with concrete, strip malls, and apartment/condo complexes.
EXTINCTION REBELLION! (Score:2)
The most endangered species (Score:1)
The honest man
Will still survive annihilation
Forming a world, a state of integrity
Sensitive, open, and strong
Major FUD (Score:1)
Some of these species haven't been seen since the 1940s but you can pretty much guarantee that the environmentalist media will spout off about this and how spending every penny of first-world GDP on climate change is the only way to fix it or we're all doomed in the next five years.
No Loss (Score:1)