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U.S. agency declares 21 species now extinct
- silexia 3y agoHow many of these were never real species, but we're simply miscategorizations of another species?
- carabiner 3y agoSkymast's comment is killed but he's absolutely right. New species are born and discovered (note these two are distinct) everyday and we still ™ don't have a good idea of what net change is in species count. I do not mourn the loss of the 49 species of bacteria that died in shower this morning, or the 20 species of mosquito eradicated.
- margalabargala 3y agoThe net change is massively negative for complex life, which is what most people care about. If we sacrificed 1000 species of bird in exchange for 10 million new species of bacteria, that's not a win. Excluding single cell organisms, the number of species going extinct in a given year in any category outweigh newly discovered or born species by around 8x.
- BurningFrog 3y agoWhen I hear numbers like this, I always wonder "out of how many"? So I looked it up: https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-species-are-there https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-species-are-there TLDR: Somewhere between 2.1 and 8.7 million.
- burkaman 3y agoThat is a lot lower than I would have guessed (only 300,000 plant species on the entire planet?). I think the number of known species, 2.16 million, is the better comparison here, because we're talking about known extinctions. Also, this is just extinctions in the US, but I can't find a good number of known species that exist in the US. For one example, 10 of the 21 species labeled as extinct here are birds, and there seem to be roughly 900 species of birds in the United States. So 10 seems like a lot. There are also 8 extinct mussel species out of 297 known in North America.
- BurningFrog 3y agoPart of what makes this hard is that "species" isn't a clearly defined concept. So, depending on which definition you use, you can get very different numbers.
- resolutebat 3y agoNearly 2M of those are insects, plants or fungi, and none of these made it into the list of 21 here. There are under 100k distinct "animals" in the sense we usually think of the word (mammals, reptiles, birds).
- roflchoppa 3y agoWhy would they be removed from the endangered species list? Shouldn’t they be placed on onto an uber-protected status list?
- blondie9x 3y agoI wish I could interview Musk. Give him a hard interview for once. Going on Lex Fridman is like going for an interview with an adoring fanboy. Just want to see someone interview him who is as smart as him. Me
- FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago> Just want to see someone interview him who is as smart as him Just send the average five year old.
- blondie9x 3y agoI wish I could interview Musk. Give him a hard interview for once. Going on Lex Fridman is like going for an interview with an adoring fanboy. Just want to see someone interview him who is as smart as him. Anyway sad to see this report. Reason I bring up Musk is he is so self righteous about focus on rockets and EVs. What's the point of a rocket reaching Mars if there is no Earth left to supply it? We are in the Holocene Extinction and the best minds are ignoring the problem and driving the dagger in deeper. That's sad.
- imgabe 3y agoWhat is the optimal number of species? Is there a universally optimal number or does it depend on conditions on the planet? On one extreme, if each individual organism were its own species, nothing would be able to mate and everything would die. If everything were one species, one disease or change in environment could wipe everything out. So, those clearly are bad. But somewhere in the middle must be a "best" number for some metric. Ecological resilience would probably be a good metric, if we could measure that. There is the assumption in a lot of the environmental rhetoric that whatever number of species and the exact types of species that existed ~200 years ago when we started keeping track are the optimal ones and that they should stay that way forever. It doesn't work that way though. If a species goes extinct, it's because its environment changed and it's no longer adapted to it. Whether the source of that change is another species (humans) or something else is irrelevant. A new species will come along that's better adapted.
- hunter-gatherer 3y ago(Personal opinion with no intent to argue or pursuade) I think you are asking the wrong optimisation question. Indeed species have been going extinct forever and differing rates. I think what we should be optimizing for is quality. I remember as a kid growing up in SE Utah just being overwhelmed with insect, reptile, amphibian, and small game wildlife in the area. You didn't look for it, it was just around. I visit frequently and have been amazed at the decline I've witnessed in just 30 years. So few of everything. Now we search for lizards and horned toads. I hardly ever see butterflies and bees. It's [not] wild. I also just drove in August from SE Idaho to Tacoma. Mostly through Montana and Idaho. I didn't have to clean my windshield once the entire trip, there and back. I remember driving as a teenager it seemed like I always had to clean my windshield, even driving on I-15 from Salt Lake city to SE Idaho. Cleaning dead bugs off my windshield is something I don't need to do anymore. I haven't done it for a long time. We could model our existence in a way to just optmize for our species existence. Humans have been running species into existence for a long time in order to populate. I think we should optimize the other way though. I think we would if we assumed that our mentally advanced status assumed a stewardship-like responsibility. Instead we take and take and take. I've been guilty as anyone, but have tried to be more mindful as I've gotten older and limit my consumption, and make sacrifices to do so where I see nobody else in my immediate sphere doing the same. I do that because I liked having nature be outside my doorstep. I don't think there is an asumption that there was or is an optimal number of species, I think it is just that some people have seen a tranformation that they don't like.
- tap-snap-or-nap 3y agoWhat does it actually take to declare a species extinct ? How long are they actually looking for them ?
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoProbably only a few decades until homo sapiens sapiens joins that list. We depend on biodiversity far more than we appreciate.
- roughly 3y agoI work in biotech, and effectively the entire field is rifling through Nature’s LEGO bin to find the parts it needs. There’s a weird overlap happening here of environmental collapse at the same moment that we’re learning just how rich that diversity is, what it means, how to use it. Hell, transgenic rices and grains - the engine of the green revolution - were all remixed landrace species, which are in danger now of being replaced by monocrops. The loss of species is a tragedy because it’s a tragedy, but it’s also a tragedy because we’re destroying our inheritance at an alarming rate before we ever really get to see what it is or what it could be. Billions of years of prior art, gone.
- civilitty 3y agoVice had an episode years ago where they followed cannabis breeders as they went to the Democratic Republic of Congo in search of the original Congolese landrace strain [1]. Environmental collapse hurts everyone! [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3nmep/we-went-hunting-for-a-rare-congolese-weed-strain-with-the-kings-of-cannabis https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3nmep/we-went-hunting-for-a...
- BenFranklin100 3y agoI work in biotech as well, and the idea that the extinction of 21 species from an estimate 8M+ species has any sort of meaningful impact on biomedical research or the understanding of basic biology is ludicrous. Further your post is histrionic. ‘Environmental collapse’, ‘destroying our inheritance’, ‘alarming rate’, suggests an individual who is pushing an agenda rather than rationally appraising the current state of the ever-changing environment and biological ecosystem.
- NPC82 3y ago>suggests an individual who is pushing an agenda Well, being wealth has been increasingly concentrated in fewer people and wealth has always been on the side of fossil fuels and climate denial, would that not illustrate a plausible narrative? At the very least, those aforementioned people probably could have done something about these issues before any of us knew about them.
- 3y ago
- drexlspivey 3y agoCan someone make the case using logical arguments on why a higher number of species is any better or worse than a lower number? Why is an ecosystem in equilibrium with 10 million species better than one with 8?
- beebeepka 3y agoCan someone make the case using logical arguments on why drexlspivey is any better or worse than no drexlspivey? Why is an ecosystem in equilibrium with drexlspivey better than one without drexlspivey?
- Loughla 3y agoMore resilience to disease or collapse maybe? Honestly, other than 'because I like animals', I don't really know though. I would be interested in the answer to this as well.
- steve_adams_86 3y agoResilience is one thing, but there are a lot of nuances to what makes species and habitat diversity so important. This isn’t a perfect example, but the other day I was researching shrimp. There is a genus called neocaridina, and they’re generally detritivores. However, I discovered that many species in the genus eat quite differently. Some will eat hair algae, some won’t. Some like to feed on hard algae, some only soft. Some have preference for higher protein foods, others less. Of the 26 known species, the manifestation of their presence in an ecosystem would actually be quite different. This is a single genus which would have substantially varying impacts on ponds, streams, and lakes for example. If you have a diverse set of these species, you will be far more likely to keep a variety of detritus and algae sources in check. Reduce the diversity, and perhaps hair algae will get out of control. Once this happens, you might see certain fish or insects lose their habitat because they depend on other vegetation, but the hair algae is absorbing too much light and nutrients now. This is applies to all kinds of animals, in all kinds of habitats. Diversity means greater balance, greater stability, and means of recovering faster when things collapse.
- francisofascii 3y ago
- DantesKite 3y agoI'm curious what would be an optimal measure of biodiversity. As in, if certain species decreases, but another increase, it's not clear to me one is more bad than another. Obviously, wouldn't want entire ecosystems wiped out. I'm just curious what a good measurement of ecosystem health would be. I'm sure there's one out there hopefully, as technology advances, we'll be able to mitigate the effects we have on the environment, and occasionally, maybe even help it.
- sillywalk 3y ago> I'm sure there's one out there hopefully, as technology advances, we'll be able to mitigate the effects we have on the environment, and occasionally, maybe even help it. Forgive my, bluntness, but statements like "optimal measure of biodiversity" are perhaps part of the problem. What the does that even mean? So where advanced technology can mitigate the effects of previously miraculous advanced technology, say micro-plastics, 'forever chemicals', pesticide residues? I am enjoying my comfort from technology, to include the glasses that allow me to "read", and post on Hacker News, but the negative externalities both to myself, and others, .. are substantial.
- dukeofdoom 3y agoReplaced by 21 new species of cockroaches, in just NY. thanks to humans. Things balance themselves out, but maybe not as favourably.
- tamaharbor 3y agoThousands of new species are identified annually. So I guess we are on the positive side.
- 29athrowaway 3y ago[flagged]
- abenga 3y agoDiscovered, not newly evolved. It doesn't matter that we know about a species or not, that causes no change in the level of biodiversity. Species becoming extinct on the other hand affects biodiversity.
- tamaharbor 3y agoHow do we know they are not being evolved?
- dukeofdoom 3y agoSome extinctions are not necessarily because of humans. For example, one species of birds will develop specialized beaks to eat a specific food source, which might lead to it dominating for a while. Especially on an Island like Hawaii. Then conditions change, due to weather, or new plant species gaining foot hold, and that bird may start being outcompeted by a different bird that will eat its specialized food source, or that food source is no longer as prevalent. Hawaii does have a lot of boomer invaders. Always wondered how long it would take in a war, before they started eating each other. Hawaii is not food secure by any means. It's almost all container ships feeding the island. Nature will find a balance.
- Axsuul 3y agoAnyone know how many new species are being created each year?
- hnbad 3y agoIIRC it's an open secret among preservationists that species often are widely known to be extinct before being declared as such because many protections hinge on their status as "endangered" and would be lifted once they're declared extinct, thus risking further endangering other species sharing the same habitat. It's essentially a choice between losing protections for other species and painting a rosier picture by undercounting what has been lost.
- gmuslera 3y agoI think has been calculated already that in the order of tens of species get extinct daily. And the rate is growing. Putting a spotlight in some particular ones a single day won’t stop the drain that we are causing in numbers much higher than the ones show here.
- Jensson 3y ago> order of tens of species get extinct daily. Around 50 new species get found every day to put that number into perspective. https://smv.org/learn/blog/how-many-species-are-left-be-discovered/#:~:text=No%20worries%2C%20though%2C%20scientists%20are,more%20un%2Dcataloged%20new%20species https://smv.org/learn/blog/how-many-species-are-left-be-disc....
- gmuslera 3y agoDiscovered, not emerged. There are not infinite amount of species, and the number is decreasing at thousands of times the background extinction rate. Is a net loss for the system, no matter if we managed to discover them before they got extinct. Of course, climate change and human civilization is causing a selection process that may lead to new species. But the rate of change is too fast for even them to survive to what is coming.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI think part of the point is that we tried to save these specific species and failed. That doesn’t bode well that we can’t even intentionally save species from extinction.
- pvaldes 3y ago> I think part of the point is that we tried to save these specific species and failed "We tried" is a very generous statement
- bmitc 3y agoAnd from the comment about the Bachman's warbler, its extinction process started over half a century ago. So we're already lagging this problem by decades if not centuries at this point.
- bakergo 3y agoSince I didn't see it linked in the article, the announcement: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/17/2023-22377/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-removal-of-21-species-from-the-list-of-endangered-and https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/17/2023-22... 10 (half) of the 21 species were in Hawaii, several of the other species were mussels
- reactordev 3y ago[flagged]
- misnome 3y agoWhat about this helpful GP comment do you feel was attempting to justify it?
- IntelMiner 3y agoClarification is not "justifying" anything. Calm down
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- spondylosaurus 3y agoHalf-expected to see vaquitas on this list... sounds like they're still holding on, at least for now :(
- Rebelgecko 3y agoThat might partially because it takes a very very long time before a species is declared extinct. The actual document[¹] is interesting because it includes some responses to peer reviewers and goes more into methodology. The species that were just declared extinct haven't been seen for decades. In some cases, the animal has probably actually been extinct for 50+ years, they're just (understandably) very cautious about declaring it. It would be awkward to have another coelacanth situation. 1: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/17/2023-22377/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-removal-of-21-species-from-the-list-of-endangered-and https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/17/2023-22...
- bmitc 3y agoThat's a good point, although in this case you can count the number of wild vaquitas on two hands. I imagine it's much harder for birds, insects, and fish, but for dolphins, they stay by the coast and need air. I can't imagine a species coming back from such low numbers.
- contingencies 3y ago[flagged]
- Exoristos 3y agoThis is such an asinine trope. Do you really think small prey animals lived in peace around the world before people arrived with cats?
- kergonath 3y agoAnd don’t destroy forests, and hedges, and swamps, and mangroves. And be considerate when you build roads.
- WillyF 3y ago“Destroyed” forest are perfect Warbler habitat—at least for the Kirtland’s Warbler which requires dense areas of young jack pine. That means either fires or logging are essential to their survival. So if you mean don’t pave over forests, then yes. But logging done properly is essential for a lot of species.
- titzer 3y ago> But logging done properly is essential for a lot of species. Hard disagree here. These species survived in niches carved out by forest fires and ruminants that keep open grasslands, prairies, and other in-between states from endlessly sprouting forests. Obviously they survived for millions of years before man came to North America. The natural carbon cycle where trees grow, live, reproduce, then die and decay, to be food for endless levels of fungus, insects, worms, grubs, etc, which in turn feed birds, snakes, frogs...I could go on, but I think you miss how utterly disruptive it is just to remove the dead tree trunks from an environment. Sustainable logging looks OK in the 50-100 year timeframe; it's one of many lies we tell ourselves. If it worked for Grandpa then it'll work for us. Maybe the soil quality holds up in the long run, maybe not? But make no mistake, logging has a vast impact and permanently alters ecosystems. Do logged forests slowly decline over centuries as their soil is depleted? Hmm...
- 3y ago
- 7373737373 3y agoMaybe it's time, beside the Global Seed Vault, to have a Global Species Vault?
- doubloon 3y agowe already have that, it's called nature parks
- Detrytus 3y agoYou mean a ZOO? We have plenty of those.
- wincy 3y agoLike an Ark?
- clnq 3y agoHuman violence and lack of morality causes a flood/rising sea levels and now we're talking about an Ark where the enlightened will spare the other animals from destruction that is for humanity to face. Way to pollute the planet so much the bible becomes an instruction manual lol (no offense to believers, just a joke)
- themaninthedark 3y agoI think believers wouldn't be offended, they want you to use the bible as an instruction manual.
- undersuit 3y agoWhat if it's easier to reverse our current course of action than to make a vault of all the animals? I mean even just collecting sperm and embryos from lizards seems kinda insane. Amphibian, fish, mollusk, and insect species are far more numerous and at far more risk.
- labster 3y agoBuilding a giant vault is definitely easier than convincing people to change the way they live. Putting aside whether the book of Genesis is literally true or not, the tale of Noah’s Ark certainly describes how people behave correctly.
- d_sem 3y agoThis is a reminder that the carrying capacity of a healthy planet is much less than 8 billion people and radical change will be the only solution. We could do with fewer people. In 2000 there was ~6.1 billion and the world was just fine.
- adrr 3y agoMost of the extinctions happened when there were less than 10m people. All the large mammals and birds got wiped out during humans hunting and gathering phase.
- xupybd 3y agoIn 2000 people were predicting the end of the world. They didn't think it was fine then just as much as you don't think it's fine now.
- xupybd 3y agoTo add to that. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1726367540354363678?t=s7W236cGBtr7oJRba9adcg&s=19 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1726367540354363678?t=s7W23...
- jklinger410 3y ago> the carrying capacity of a healthy planet is much less than 8 billion people Not sure what you are citing for this, but I would assume this is less than 8 billion people based on our current pollution and consumption rates. This stat is a mind-blowing one also considering the sheer amount of empty space still available on the planet. With good resource management and terraforming you'd think this number would be a lot larger.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lebean 3y agoMost of us are doing alright, relatively speaking.
- abletonlive 3y ago
- bmitc 3y agoThat Bachman's warbler is beautiful. Such a shame. > “The bird had a ‘buzzy’ song, and the song added to the beauty of the bird, and when combined that added to the magic of North Carolina. We lost a little magic when we lost the species. And what’s really sad is that the Bachman’s warbler was abundant at the turn of the 20thcentury, but by 1950 it was noted as one of the rarest birds in North America.” This hurts, especially knowing that it's a story that we've unfortunately told a thousand times in the past hundred years.
- m4jor 3y agoIsn't this just how life on Earth works tho? >Of all species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 percent are now extinct.
- bmitc 3y agoNo, not really. The rate of extinction has skyrocketed above the baseline extinction rate in the last 100-200 years, and it has a very specific and known cause: human industrialization and spread.
- ravetcofx 3y agoWhat people fail to grasp is we are a great mass extinction event, and it is a fairly conscious effort that we're not stopping it.
- queuebert 3y agoHence the term "anthropocene" for the current era.
- Jensson 3y agoHumans already started it when we killed off all the largest land animals outside of Africa 13 000 years ago. You know Elephants and Mammoths were found all over earth before then. Thank humans for the lack of Elephants in America.
- janalsncm 3y agoI’m pretty sure I’m plagiarizing from somewhere, but there’s a certain distinct sadness in being the last songbird of your species: singing a mating call that no other creature will heed, no matter how skillfully it is sung. When it dies, the world has a little less joy than before.
- fwip 3y agoThis Mountain Goats song about extinction, and being the last of your kind makes me tear up every time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc_TETgMSNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc_TETgMSNA Lyrics excerpt: In Costa Rica, in a burrow underground // Climb to the surface, blink my eyes and look around // I'm all alone here as I try my tiny song // Claim my place beneath the sky, but I won't be here for long // I sang all night // The moon shone on me through the trees // No brothers left // And there'll be no more after me //
- ChatGTP 3y agoMy theory is that humans inject this into it. My observation and feelings are that animals see themselves as part of a much larger whole and don’t worry too much about being the “final whatever”, it’s just a concept. Ironically it’s our quest to not be the last songbird that seems to keep ruining the planet for the songbirds.
- ben_w 3y agoThey may or may not see themselves as "the last one", but that's independent from them being lonely because of it.
- jstanley 3y ago> animals see themselves as part of a much larger whole I really don't think animals pay any attention to abstract concepts like this at all.
- ChatGTP 3y agoLet me rephrase actually. They don’t think it. They just know it. They don’t live in constant anxiety like us.
- mullingitover 3y agoCommand+F "mosquito" sigh It's wild how this news is basically a non-story, people don't care about "oops we accidentally did a bunch of extinctions" ...but people will riot if you launch a project to intentionally wipe out the single most deadly insect species in the history of humanity (and one that's not even a keystone species!).
- xvilka 3y agoMosquito while being biggest killer of all, still has an important role in a food chain as a water predator in its larvae phase.
- nerpderp82 3y agoThey also move nutrients down the foodchain. Just because we don't like them doesn't mean they don't serve an important purpose in the web of life.
- JoshTriplett 3y agoYes, it would have an impact on the ecosystem. We could study the potential impact, and decide whether it was more or less of a concern than the number of lives lost to mosquito-borne diseases.
- temp0826 3y agoI remember reading that some types are also pollinators, and maybe even the sole pollinators for some particular plants.
- mullingitover 3y agoDemonstrating my point - people erroneously line up to defend them. The species that carry disease actually do not have an important role in the food chain. They are not at all a keystone species. In most of the places where they cause widespread misery and death they're not even a native species, they're invasive.
- titzer 3y ago
- skymast 3y ago[dead]