Likewise the Humpback Whale ( Megaptera novaeangliae which means “big-winged New Englander”).
Note the mention “Like other large whales” there. Lots of large whales got hunted to near extinction. The rorqual (baleen) whale populations, mostly, have been very slow to recover. The Gray Whale population seems to be an exception, which has recovered substantially faster than a lot of the other species.
The Blue Iguana (Cyclura lewisi) dropped to an estimated wild population of 5-15 individuals in 2003 before becoming functionally extinct in the wild by 2005. The Blue Iguana was considered critically endangered with only a small captive population remaining.
Through the efforts of the Blue Iguana Recovery Program the population has rebounded somewhat with a small wild population reestablished. BY 2012 the wild population was estimated at 750 individuals. Now the Blue Iguana is merely considered endangered.
So not exactly common, but definitely moving in the right direction.
This one must be a success story of some kind. As a kid, I don’t remember seeing them at all. More to the point, I don’t recall the parkland around the local pond being a minefield of Canada Goose Poop – and I think I certainly would have remembered that.
A good friend of mine is/was an ornithologist with the New Zealand Department of Conservation and started work there in the late 80s. You may have crossed paths, Colibri. Pete became an expert in island eradication of predators.
Fast forward to recent times and he left DOC to work on a project, eradication on…Lord Howe Island. Fascinating, interesting, and frustrating.
Unfortunately the residents of Lord Howe Island are divided as to whether conservation work should take place at all. :smack: In fact the project has been suspended and Pete is back home.
I would strongly object to that population being labeled “close to thriving”. The entire population closely managed by us hoo-mans and would likely go extinct very quickly should we stop that management.
One thing to keep in mind about the bison is that around 95% of the “bison” now in existence are in fact bison-cattle hybrids; as indicated in that reference, it is estimated that the number of pure bison is about 15,000 to 25,000.
One of the last remnants of the Pleistocene megafauna. That Condor really doesnt have a niche anymore. No more mastodon carcasses to eat.
Interestingly the Raven population in CA has really perked up, due to the fact they are fast & smart enough to eat roadkill, whilst the regular buzzards etc take off too slow to avoid getting run over- and becoming more roadkill.
The Peregrine falcon is another example of a bird adapting to humans- it now lives on tall buildings and eats pigeons. Plenty of both in any city.
This is the one I was thinking of. I read Last Chance to See recently and after reading the sad story of how they were so desperately endangered in the '80s, I was glad to see they came back.
I don’t know if they were on the brink of extinction, but hereabouts there has been a grassroots movement to bring back theEastern Bluebird. Plans were made available for how to build a bluebird house, many people did so, and now bluebird sightings are, if not common, definitely on the rise.
I’m not seeing any mentions of species actually hunted to full extinction, but many species hunted to near extinction. The Baji, or Chinese River Dolphin, was declared extinct in 2006 due to industrialization of its river environment. The Atlantic population of the Gray Whale went extinct due to over-hunting. Many other species were greatly depleted and have only slowly recovered.
It is interesting that no successful species of land mammalian megafauna has become extinct in the last few centuries, where guns made hunting so much easier.
On your list the Thylacine doesnt quite qualify as megafauna. Quagga, Pyrenean Ibex , bubal hartebeest, & Javan Tigers are all subspecies.
It’s quite possible that some subspecies of whale were hunted to extinction before being identified.
We really didn’t have the desire or the technology to hunt whales to excess until the 1800s, so probably no whales were rendered extinct (by human action) before they were known to science. It’s not like they were on the land where we could eat them easily.
I think the Ca raven population boon can be partially credited to the startling population boom. The ravens have become experts at raiding the nests and eating the young. The starting breed around industrail building and canopies and are easy pickings for the ravens.
