Endling Stories and Biodiversity Conservation

What is the significance of endlings according to scientists?

According to Paula Ehrlich, why is the Northern white rhino important?

Why is it important to understand everything that an animal does for the world?

How many animal species are estimated to have gone extinct since around 1500?

Why is the estimate of 881 animal species extinct since 1500 considered conservative?

Why are scientists reluctant to declare a species extinct?

How many vertebrate species have been declared extinct since 1500?

What is the significance of more than 75% of the world’s species going extinct within a relatively short time frame?

How many mass extinction events have occurred over the last half-billion years?

What event, some 250 million years ago, saw up to 96% of Earth’s species disappear?

Understanding everything that an animal is and does for the world helps us understand that we, too, are a part of ______ - and we need nature to survive.

The Northern white rhino isn’t just a part of the world, it’s a world unto itself - its own ecosystem - mowing fields through grazing, fertilizing lands where it walks, having insects land on its skin, and then with birds feeding off those ______.

Somewhere in the core of our humanity, we recognize these creatures, we’re touched by their story, and we feel compassion - and maybe also a moral compulsion - to ______.

The endlings mentioned above are well-known because scientists realized that these species were declining and attempted to ______ them.

Scientists count 881 animal species as having gone extinct since around 1500, dating to the first records held by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – the global scientific authority on the status of nature and ______.

It’s hard to prove the negative, to prove you can’t find it,” said Sean O’Brien, an ecologist who heads the NatureServe nonprofit working to establish definitive data on North American species. “And it’s emotional. A botanist doesn’t want to declare it extinct because it feels like a ______.”

Among terrestrial vertebrates, or land animals with a backbone, 322 species have been declared extinct since 1500. Add in the number of possibly extinct species and the tally comes to ______.

For moisture-loving amphibians, vulnerable to both pollution and drought, things are looking particularly bleak - with the extinction rate escalating over the last few decades. Only 37 species have been declared extinct with a high degree of certainty since 1500. But scientists suspect more than 100 others have disappeared over the last 30-40 years, according to a 2015 study in the journal Science Advances. Mass extinctions The number of vertebrates that have gone extinct over the last 100 years should have taken 800 - 10,000 years. Plenty of animals have gone extinct naturally or due to causes unrelated to human activity. In a healthy environment, as species die off naturally, new species evolve – and an evolutionary balance is maintained. This turnover relies on what scientists consider a normal or background extinction rate. But when the extinction rate jumps so high that more than 75% of the world’s species go extinct within the relatively short time frame of less than 2 million years, this is considered a mass extinction ______.

That’s happened five times over the last half-billion years, which we know through studying Earth’s fossil record - with layers upon layers of sediment having buried the remains of animals over time. When a layer with a large and diverse number of animals is found, scientists can see that a mass ______ occurred.

Through other evidence in the geological record, researchers can help deduce what likely caused the ______.