8-Jan-2020: Chinese paddlefish has gone extinct

The Chinese paddlefish and its close relatives have been around for at least 200 million years. The species, reaching up to 23 feet in length, survived unimaginable changes and upheavals, such as the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs and marine reptiles like plesiosaurs that it swam alongside. In its time, flowering plants evolved, and came to populate the shores of its ancestral home, the Yangtze River, in modern-day China.

Much later, bamboo came on the scene, and well after that, giant pandas. In the last few thousand years, a blink in evolutionary time, the land filled with people, and China became the most populous country on Earth. In the muddy waters of the Yangtze, the paddlefish lived as it had for eons, using its special sword-like snout to sense electrical activity to find prey, such as crustaceans and fish.

But there’s one phenomenon this ancient species, sometimes called the “panda of the Yangtze,” could not survive—humans. A new paper published in the Science of the Total Environment concludes that the species has gone extinct, mainly due to overfishing and dam construction.

The study by the team involved reviewing fish catch records and also carrying out field studies over the years 2017 to 2018. Their field studies involved setting up nets, catching fish and canvassing fish markets. They report that they found no evidence of the presence of Chinese paddlefish. They also report that the last known sighting of a live specimen was back in 2003—the last known dead sighting was in 2007. Not only has the fish gone extinct, they note, but there are no specimens in captivity and no tissue samples were stored; thus it cannot be revived through cloning. The researchers have concluded that the paddlefish is gone for good.

The Yangtze, Asia's largest river, originates in an eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau and meanders westward for 6,300 kilometers before finally meeting the East China Sea at Shanghai. The paddlefish were prominent in many parts of the river system and were regularly fished. Things became difficult for them when the Gezhouba Dam was built in 1981—it split the paddlefish population in two and prevented those fish trapped below it from spawning. Few were sighted after 1995.

The researchers suggest the loss of the paddlefish should serve as a lesson in fish conservation—efforts to save the fish did not begin until the fish was already gone. They suggest more surveys are required more often to allow scientists to track the state of aquatic species.

23-Nov-2019: Sumatran rhino is now extinct in Malaysia

The Sumatran rhino has become extinct in Malaysia, one of the two countries where it is mostly found after the last remaining individual died on November 23, 2019, due to natural causes. Iman, a 25-year-old female, had been suffering from cancer. She had developed non-malignant uterine tumors, which were pressing against her bladder.

Iman was captured in 2014 from the Danum Valley in the Malaysian state of Sabah, in the Malaysian-administered part of Borneo island. Since then, she had been living at the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary in the Tabin Wildlife Reserve.

Iman’s death came just six months after the last male Sumatran rhino in Malaysia, Tam, died, also at the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary in Tabin Wildlife Reserve. He died on May 27, 2019, after a prolonged illness, at the age of 35.

The Sumatran rhino is the smallest of the five extant rhino species in the world. The other species include the White Rhino, the Black Rhino, the Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros and the Javan Rhino.

After the deaths of Tam and Iman, there are now just 80 Sumatran rhinos left in the world, all of them in Indonesia, especially on the island of Sumatra and the Indonesian part of Borneo.

Sumatran rhino was once found in Northeast India. In the Indian subcontinent in the 19th century, the Sumatran rhinoceros occurred in parts of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram, northern Bengal, Bhutan, Comilla and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (the latter two areas are now in Bangladesh).

8-Jan-2019: Lonely George the tree snail dies, and a species goes extinct

A Hawaiian tree snail, who was an ‘Endling’, died on New Year’s Day 2019, making his species the first to be declared officially extinct in 2019.

The DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife is sad to report that George, the last known Achatinella apexfulva, died on New Year’s Day 2019. According to David Sischo, wildlife biologist with the Hawaii Invertebrate Program, George was approximately 14 years old. Unfortunately, he is survived by none.

The DLNR further said that Achatinella apexfulva was the first of over 750 species of land snail from the Hawaiian Islands to be described by Western science. The first description came from a shell on a ‘lei’ (traditional garland used by indigenous Polynesian Hawaiians) given to British seaman, Captain George Dixon, while he docked on the island of O'ahu around 1787. ‘Apex fulva’, or ‘yellow tip’, was a trait that many of their kind displayed and is what they were named for.

The snails, said the DNLR, were once widely distributed on O'ahu in the central-northern Ko'olau Mountains, and because they occurred in lower elevations, they were easily accessible and heavily used for making lei due to the beauty of their shells.

In 1997, the last 10 known Achatinella apexfulva were brought to a laboratory at the University of Hawai'i for captive rearing. A few babies were born, but when the lab experienced a die-off for unknown reasons, all the Achatinella apexfulva perished expect for one lone individual, George.

George was named as homage to the famous tortoise on the Galapagos archipelago, who was also an endling, the last of his kind. The snail was a hermaphrodite, having both male and female parts. And since Achatinella apexfulva is a species that is an ‘obligate outcrossing species’, meaning that it needs a partner to reproduce, George could not further his species, given that all of them had died and he himself was a hermaphrodite.

The DNLR also noted that George’s passing is emblematic of the plight of the tree and land snails of Hawaii, most of which are facing imminent extinction due to invasive species and climate change.

However, the DNLR also revealed that in 2017, a small two-millimeter snippet of George’s foot had been collected and plopped into a vial of pink-colored media. This piece of living tissue from George was currently in a deep freeze at the San Diego Zoo’s Frozen Zoo.

The Department said that ‘while it is currently not possible to clone a snail, it certainly will be some day. George may yet live again!’

4-Sep-2018: Eight bird species are first confirmed avian extinctions this decade

Spix’s macaw, a brilliant blue species of Brazilian parrot that starred in the children’s animation Rio, has become extinct this century, according to a new assessment of endangered birds.

The macaw is one of eight species, including the poo-uli, the Pernambuco pygmy-owl and the cryptic tree hunter, that can be added to the growing list of confirmed or highly likely extinctions, according to a new statistical analysis by BirdLife International.

Historically, most bird extinctions have been small-island species vulnerable to hunting or invasive species but five of these new extinctions have occurred in South America and are attributed by scientists to deforestation.

Stuart Butchart, BirdLife International’s chief scientist, said the new study highlighted that an extinction crisis was now unfolding on large continents, driven by human habitat destruction.

“People think of extinctions and think of the dodo but our analysis shows that extinctions are continuing and accelerating today,” he said. “Historically 90% of bird extinctions have been small populations on remote islands. Our evidence shows there is a growing wave of extinctions washing over the continent driven by habitat loss from unsustainable agriculture, drainage and logging.”

More than 26,000 of the world’s species are now threatened, according to the latest “red list” assessment, with scientists warning that humans are driving a sixth great extinction event.

Four of the eight newly identified bird extinctions took place in Brazil, once home to Spix’s macaw. The attractive parrot was caged and traded for 150 years before any wild populations were discovered but in 1985, three birds were found in a Brazilian forest. Two were illegally captured for the pet trade, and attempts to breed the final male were unsuccessful. A 2016 sighting in the wild is now thought to have been an escaped caged bird, leaving the last known sighting in 2000.

While captive populations of Spix’s macaw are being bred for reintroduction into restored woodland habitat there is no second chance for the poo-uli, the cryptic treehunter and the Alagoas foliage-gleaner: they have disappeared from the skies forever.

According to the new analysis, published in Biological Conservation, the Alagoas foliage-gleaner, a small gingery forest bird which picks invertebrates from leaves, became extinct in 2011, disappearing from a heavily logged patch of Brazil.

The cryptic treehunter was only discovered in two patches of forest of Murici in north-eastern Brazil in 2002 but has not been seen since 2007 after these small forests were felled and replaced with sugar cane plantations and pasture.

The poo-uli, or black-faced honeycreeper, was found on the island of Maui in Hawaii but was last sighted in 2004. Attempts to breed the bird in captivity failed.

The study by BirdLife International assessed 51 species judged “critically endangered” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list using a new statistical method to analyse and assess search efforts and the validity of sightings of species on the brink of extinction.

It found just one species that was less endangered than feared, and recommended removing the “possibly extinct” classification from the Moorea reed warbler of New Caledonia. Of the eight species to be reclassified as extinct, four are “critically endangered (possibly extinct)”.

They include the glaucous macaw, once found in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil before the clearing of its palm grove habitat for farming saw it dwindle to one population in Paraguay. Another is the Pernambuco pygmy-owl, a 15cm-tall owl that eats insects and hasn’t been seen in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco since 2002, with much of its habitat destroyed by illegal logging.

Accurate assessments of the moment of extinction are difficult to make with many elusive species but according to Butchart, the “possibly extinct” classification is an extremely cautious judgment which almost certainly means that the species has vanished.

Butchart said it was important not to prematurely declare a bird extinct because abandoning conservation efforts could hasten its demise but accurate assessments of extinction were vital for efficient conservation work. “We’ve got limited conservation resources so we need to spend these wisely and effectively. If some of these species have gone we need to redirect these resources to those that remain.”

“Obviously it’s too late to help some of these iconic species but because we know birds better than any other taxonomic class we know which other species are most at risk. We hope this study will inspire a redoubling of efforts to prevent other extinctions.

30-Dec-2017: List of Species marked extinct in 2017

According to the updated IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) red list, following are the species that were marked as “EXTINCT”

1. Christmas Island Pipistrelle : This small bat found exclusively on Christmas Island, Australia was listed as critically endangered last year. Predation, loss of habitat, and diseases were pointed out as causes for its extinction.
2. Christmas Island Whiptail-skink : Another species endemic to Christmas Island, this lizard went extinct this year. Non-native predators and insecticide poisoning drove it over the edge.
3. Christmas Island chained gecko : The species is listed as extinct in the wild, which means it is now found only in a captive breeding programme.
4. Gunther's Dwarf Burrowing skink : Though no record of the skink has been made for more than 125 years, this native of South Africa was officially confirmed to be extinct only this year.

Here are the species that are under a high risk of extinction in the near future. According to the updated list, they are placed under the "critically endangered" category.

1. Western Ringtail Possum: The number for this species has declined by almost 80 per cent in the past 10 years. Australia’s increasingly dry and hot climate has led to its dramatic decline.
2. Yellow-breasted Bunting: Loss of roosting site and use of pesticides are major causes of their its decline.
3. Plains Wanderer : Exposure to pesticides, habitat loss, predation by foxes have all affected the survival of this small quail-like bird.
4. Green Poison Frog, Perret's Toad, and Rose's Mountain Toad are also listed as critically endangered.

Due to conservation efforts and captive breeding, a few species have recovered and moved from endangered to “vulnerable”

1. Snow Leopard: Setting up of protected areas, anti-poaching measures, vaccination have helped save the mountain species of Asia.
2. North Brown Kiwi & Okarito Kiwi: Conservation efforts by the Australian Government and captive breeding has aided the change in their status.
3. Aberdare cisticola : Their status of this Kenyan warbler bird was changed after re-assessment in its habitat
4. Ouvea Parakeet: Native to Ouvea Island of France, conservation efforts by local population has helped increase its population.
5. The C. duncanensis which was termed 'extinct in the wild' last year has recovered fully-thanks to conservationists. A native to the Pinzon Island in Ecuador, it faced constant trouble from non-native rats who feed on its eggs. In order to save these endemic species of the island, conservationists started captive breeding programme and a rat eradication programme which proved a huge success and now the tortoise is down listed as vulnerable.

15-Dec-2019: Rare sighting of Bar-headed geese at Tsokar, Ladakh

The bar-headed goose (Anser indicus) is known to be one of the highest flying birds in the world. It can fly at altitudes of 25,000 feet, while migrating over the Himalayas, where oxygen and temperature levels are extremely low. This pale grey bird is distinct from other geese in its genus because of the black bars on its head.

A recent waterbird census being undertaken at the Tsokar wetlands in Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir led to the rare sighting of a bar-headed goose with a red-coloured collar that had the number H-19 imprinted on it. This tagged bird was first spotted on 28 August 2013 by a team comprising members from WWF-India and the Department of Wildlife Protection, Leh. On sharing this information with various bird banding groups and institutions, Mr. D S Dhadwal, Himachal Pradesh Forest Department confirmed that this particular bird had been collared at a site named Nagrota Surian at Pong Lake in Himachal Pradesh on 9 March 2011.

While stating that WWF-India’s work extends to the states of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, Mr. Ravi Singh, Secretary General & CEO, WWF-India said, “We have had for almost two decades now a wetlands conservation programme in Ladakh, and with this kind of knowledge – of the bar-headed goose’s migratory route to Himachal – we are able to understand and develop conservation strategies for sites critical to migratory birds and wildlife with the support of government agencies.”

This sighting confirmed that the bar-headed goose breeds at Tsokar in Ladakh and winters at Pong Lake in Himachal Pradesh. So far, this is the shortest established migratory route for the species; earlier migration studies on the same species at Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur (Javed et al. 2000) and at Sur Sarovar Bird Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh (Kalra et al. 2011) revealed that this species covered very long distances from these sites to high altitude wetlands in Tibet.

The summer habitat of the bar-headed goose is high-altitude lakes where it grazes on short grass, whereas the winter habitat is cultivated fields, where it feeds on barley, rice and wheat and could therefore cause crop damage.

The sighting evoked great enthusiasm among the wildlife community as A K Singh, PCCF & Chief Wildlife Warden, Government of Jammu and Kashmir added that it is a matter of joy for the department that for the first time in the entire avian history of Ladakh, the migratory route of a bird species has been established which will further boost conservation efforts for this particular species. Lauding the efforts of the survey team, Jigmet Takpa, CCF & Regional Wildlife Warden, Ladakh has called for regular bird monitoring initiatives at the various wetlands of Ladakh which hold enormous significance as breeding sites for the key migratory species of birds. In the same vein, Mr. Pankaj Chandan, Head, High Altitude Wetlands Conservation Programme, WWF-India affirmed that such findings have a huge significance for conservation and will help in developing wetland site networks in the Himalayas.