“It’s not too late to stop more plants and animals from going extinct, but we have to act fast,” said Greenwald.īachman’s warbler: Bachman’s warbler was a small yellow and black songbird that once bred in swampy thickets in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee and overwintered in Cuba, where it was seen for the last time in 1962. Every lost species threatens to unravel ecosystems and in the process reduce the services they provide. Species also form the building blocks of ecosystems, which purify air and water, pollinate crops, cycle nutrients, moderate climate and more. One silver lining to this sad situation is that protecting and restoring forests, grasslands and other natural habitats will help address both.”Īll food and most medicines come directly from plants and animals. “Both threaten to undo our very way of life, leaving our children with a considerably poorer planet. “Few people realize the extent to which the crises of extinction and climate change are deeply intertwined,” said Greenwald. Now several other native Hawaiian birds are on the brink, including the ʻakikiki, which is down to as few as five pairs in the wild because climate change is allowing mosquitoes to reach further up into their mountain habitat. The introduction to the islands of mosquitoes, which are not native and carry both avian pox and avian malaria, provided the nail in the coffin. Their forest habitats were razed by development and agriculture. The Hawaiian birds declared extinct today are a case in point. Scientists from around the world warn that the planet is at risk of losing more than a million species in the coming decades if swift action isn’t taken to protect more of the natural world, stop exploitation of species, address climate change, reduce pollution and stop the spread of alien invasive species. It also delayed removal of the ivory-billed woodpecker based on scientific disagreement over its extinction. In a single bright spot, the agency retained protection for one Hawaiian plant species because it may still survive. We absolutely must do everything we can to avert the loss of even more threads in our web of life.” “These plants and animals can never be brought back. “My heart breaks over the loss of these 21 species,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. species that have likely been lost to extinction. The extinct species include eight of Hawaiʻi’s precious honeycreepers, the bridled white-eye and little Mariana fruit bat of Guam, a Texas fish, nine southeastern mussels and the Bachman’s warbler. Fish and Wildlife Service today finalized a rule removing 21 species from the list of threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act because of extinction.
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