Going extinct
We all have heard from TV or saw on the Internet alarming news about global warming, enormous masses of plastic, or the pollution in the big metropolis of the world, but in this article, we will discover how these factors are affecting the wildlife, especially certain species who are scarily close to disappearing.
Let's start with the most notorious species, namely gorillas. These are a fantastic breed that shares 98.3% of their DNA with humans. Three out of four species of the Eastern and Western Gorilla are Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. In June 2020, there were only around 150 to 180 adults left in the wild and like many endangered animals, their decline is mostly due to habitat loss, disease, and human conflict. Gorillas are also slow to recover as they have a low reproductive rate, meaning females only give birth every four to six years. Some amazing facts about these animals are that they are highly intelligent and have been observed using tools in the wild and even some gorillas in captivity have learned to use sign language to communicate with humans.
The next species is a victim of Hurricane Maria, which, in 2017, knocked down a third of the trees on the island Dominica and stripped the rest of their leaves and fruits. We are talking about the Imperial Amazon, a spectacular colorful parrot who unfortunately is also going extinct. The species is critically endangered, in 2019 is estimated that there were only about 50 mature individuals left in the
wild.
But the ones that are most in danger are the Javan rhinoceros, which are now listed as critically endangered. With only one known population in the wild, living in the south-western Java, Indonesia, it is one of the world's rarest large mammals. Although there are only between 58 and 68 left in the wild, they are also often poached for their horns.
The next fact may be shocking, but tigers are heading fast to disappearing. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 100,000 tigers in the world but today the number has dropped alarmingly, being estimated to 3,900 in the wild. Several factors contribute to tigers being classified as endangered, these include poaching, Illegal trade of tiger parts, loss of habitat, human conflict, and climate change. Methods are being developed to save this species, like building land bridges across busy highways to give wildlife a safe means of travel and breeding programs that help grow populations.
In the end, you may ask, why don't we hear about more species going extinct? Well, the answer to that question is more complex than you might think: It Takes Time, and when that happens, it's not easy for researchers to show that a species has vanished forever. Also, Mistakes Are Costly, the biggest cost being declaring a species extinct too early can lead to its extinction. That's called the "Romeo Error," named after Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet. In the play, lovestruck Romeo mistakenly thinks his beloved Juliet is dead, so he takes his own life. That's not exactly how it would play out in the wild, but when humans incorrectly think a species is extinct when it's not, the error can lead to the removal of any legal protections for the species or its habitat.
Given all of this, we know that many more species are going extinct than get reported and we also know that breeds of animals completely vanishing are not just some fairytales, it is a calamitous fact that affects all of us in unimagined ways.
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