I’m sure you are familiar with the extinction of the passenger pigeon. The last one was in a zoo, so we knew when it died.
Has there been any extinctions like this in the last 30 years (during my lifetime)? I don’t really mean the kind where we haven’t seen a species for the 50 years so we are going to just assume its extinct. I’m more interested in they kind where we know where the last ones are and we know when the individuals have died.
I can’t think of any. I’m really more interested in charismatic megafauna type things, though small critters and plants may have to do.
Unless an animals is in a zoo that’s going to be impossible to do. For example the last Caribbean Monk Seal vanished in the 50s. We know where they lived, so it was a safe bet that when the last one vanished the species was gone. But we couldn’t be sure that they were all extinct until the time period ran down. There was always a tiny chance that they were hiding in the breeding colonies of other seal species and so forth.
That is the case for any wild species. We can never be 100% certain that the last vanished, wild individual is really the last until 50 years have gone past. There have been a few cases where the last known wild individuals have died and the species has shown up elsewhere. The parma wallaby being the classic example.
As far as charismatic recent extinctions, the Yangtze dolphin is the obvious candidate.
Dozens of species of frogs have evidently gone extinct in the last few years due to a spreading fungal infection. While we’re not absolutely sure all are extinct, we haven’t been able to find any at all in places where they used to be abundant.
One of the most recent apparent extinctions of birds is that of the Hawaiian Po’ouli. The last bird in captivity died in 2004, and none have been seen it the wild since.
The official IUCN criterion for declaring a species extinct is:
A conservative criterion for extinction is usually no records for 50 years.