This could perhaps be helped by better awareness of and management of lost species as a group. Securing funding sources to support searches for lost species is therefore important. There are plenty of skilled field scientists who would love nothing more than to spend their time in under-studied ecosystems searching for lost animals, but funding to support such fieldwork is becoming increasingly scarce.Ĭonfirming whether or not a species is extinct requires extensive and exhaustive searches of ecosystems that are often difficult to reach and search, like the Lambusango Forest in Indonesia. Many lost species live in remote ecosystems that are difficult to reach, like inaccessible rainforests or vast tundras. That is, of course, easier said than done. So what should be done about the confusing problem of lost species? Clearly, the answer is to go looking for them. While most of these lost species are (or were) found in the tropics, they also hail from the United States, China, Australia and Canada, and include everything from tiny shrews and salamanders to dolphins and wild cattle. The 'Lord God Bird' might be extinct, but the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker isn't over yet
And the last confirmed sighting of a Canadian species, the Eskimo curlew, was in 1963. The famous ivory-billed woodpecker was last seen in 1944, although purported sightings continue to this day. None of these have been declared extinct, but none have been reliably observed for at least 50 years. In our study, we found that 562 terrestrial vertebrates - mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles - are currently stuck in lost species limbo, almost twice as many as the number declared extinct. The last confirmed sighting of an Eskimo curlew was in 1963. And because more and more species are predicted to become extinct, discrepancies between the number of “going extinct” and the number of “gone extinct” species may become more of a problem. Such a mismatch can, to put it mildly, sow confusion. The actual number of species that have been declared extinct by the IUCN seems, on the face of it, much less dramatic: only 85 mammals or less than 2% of that group, for instance. A 2019 report by the United Nations suggested that a million species are threatened with extinction (roughly 12 per cent of all species). With our colleague, Andrew Fairbairn, we recently documented that surprisingly many species have not been seen in over 50 years, and remain in a sort of limbo between extant (species that are currently living) and extinct. Perhaps more importantly, crying wolf undermines the credibility of extinction as a label.īeyond reasonable doubt is a conservative position, but it leaves us in a bit of a pickle.
Potentially urgent conservation actions for the species in question stop, and in some cases, those conservation actions can help protect entire ecosystems. Incorrectly declaring a species extinct can have serious consequences. Meet the Lazarus creatures – six species we thought were extinct, but aren't The Miles’ robber frog was once thought extinct, but was rediscovered in Honduras.
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