![]() ![]() The problem transcends extinctions, especially when these ecosystem service providers are extirpated from a given range. These include maintaining the levels of certain gases in the atmosphere, cleaning the water, pollinating plants, and other services that work better in non-degraded habitats. “These are the services we get for free from the proper function of nature,” Gerardo Ceballos, ecologist and conservationist at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, told Gizmodo. ![]() Though they’re not crowdpleasers, these endemic plants and animals serve important purposes in their environment-what biologists call ecosystem services. While a fraction of these are rare and charismatic species that occur over a large area, a majority are lesser-known and live only in very limited areas, such as on single mountains, in fragments of habitat, single watersheds, or on islands. Species today typically go extinct due to one or a combination of several factors: humans clearing their habitat, humans purposely or inadvertently introducing invasive species to their habitats, humans polluting their habitats, humans over-harvesting the species for food or other uses, or humans indirectly harming habitats through the effects of climate change. Study skins of the extinct Lana’i and Kaua’i ‘akiaola Photo: Paul Sweet/AMNH ![]() Declaring a species extinct itself can be an act of giving up, or worse-once a species is considered extinct, governments may no longer feel the need to fund protections for its habitat. Generally, it takes decades without a sighting of a species plus dedicated searches before researchers can fully establish that no individuals are left. The list is contains only 160 species, many of which were last seen many years ago or only discovered recently. The IUCN’s Red List names only a thousand extinct or extinct-in-the-wild species-but one paper estimated that 7 percent of the known extant species might be extinct, if you include estimates of invertebrate extinctions.īelow, we’ve compiled a list of the species that the IUCN declared extinct in the past decade (it does not include species still around but declared extinct in the wild). Earth might be home to anywhere from 5 million to 10 million species, or perhaps a trillion, according to disparate estimates, of which researchers have catalogued less than 2 million. Even figuring out the actual extent of the biodiversity crisis is difficult, given how hard it is to estimate what we don’t know. But these estimates aren’t made from stories about big, rare zoo attractions most of those victims are likely invertebrates, plants, and other beings you may not think much about. Scientists estimate that species are going extinct 1,000 times faster than they should be, and “literally dozens” go extinct each day. During the 2000s, a cement company wiped the hill off the map for its valuable resources, rendering the “microjewel” snail extinct. Perhaps a better mascot of the extinction crisis is Plectostoma sciaphilum a small snail, called a “microjewel” for its beautiful, intricate shell, that inhabited a single limestone hill in Malaysia. But George’s story is not a typical story. ![]()
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