The 6th Extinction Rolls On

US wildlife officials reported twemty-two animals and one plant should be removed from the Endangered Species list because they are extinct. The man-made biodiversity crisis emperils one million species as habitat destruction, climate change, pollution, poaching and expoitation kill creatures. The species declared extinct include eleven birds, eight freshwater mussels, two fish, a bat and a plant. These were probably extinct or almost so by the time the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 says the Center for Biological Diversity.

So far fifty-four species have been removed from the Act's protections due to their official recovery. Forty-eight have been upgraded from endangered status to threatened. Eleven species have already been declared extinct. Official extinction is not taken lightly by scientists. Years of searching take place before such a drastic admission is made. The last confirmed sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) took place in in Louisiana in 1944. A flurry of unconfirmed sightings occurred in the early 2000s. The sightings led to a 2005 paper in the prestigious journal, Science that concluded the ivory bill still persists in the backwater bayous of southeastern US. Repeated recent searches have failed to locate the bird. It now only exists in legend according to the most recent assessment of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The biologist who submitted that assessment said it was the hardest decision she had to make in her professional life.

Conservation has played a key role in preventing more extinctions as man transforms the planet beyond healthy biological functioning. One idea that is gaining traction as policy makers endlessly discuss what to do about biodiversity decline is the "30x30" plan. That is, conserve and protect 30 percent of the Earth's surface by 2030. What is needed now is action, not more rhetoric, or as Greta Thornberg antipoetically put it, "blah, blah, blah".