Animals that desperately need our help!

I am not going to pick a side, but I find that generally optimism helps a lot when discussing stuff like this, because you get more hope and so you aren't as down in the dumps and you also don't feel like your goals are impossible to reach.
 
savethelephant said:
Athough there are only 4 (or another really small number) now, if conservation allowes it, the whole species could come back.
For example- Bison in wild: Only had 22 and 300 in total individuals
Mauritius Kestrel- Only 4 individuals and 1 breeding pair and now they have gone from extinct to endangered.
Pere david deer, mongolian wild horse, Panamanian golden frog, etc... Are all conservation success stories where it seemed hopeless until people decided that they wanted to save this species.
So never say a species is completely hopeless.(Unless of course the remaining individuals are all one sex...)
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How can be that possibe, for Mauritius kestrel, for population to expand from just only 6 individuals, are you sure that they were 6? What about inbreeding?
 
Nikola Chavkosk said:
How can be that possibe, for Mauritius kestrel, for population to expand from just only 6 individuals, are you shure that they were 6? What about inbreeding?
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there's lots of info on the internet about the Mauritius kestrel recovery. This article is concise and has references at the bottom: Mauritius kestrel: A conservation success story - Scientific American Blog Network

Island species tend to be very resilient against inbreeding, probably because they descend from small populations originally and deleterious genes have long ago been weeded out. There are many examples of insular species rebounding from lows of just a few individuals with no apparent bad effects.
 
savethelephant said:
Yes there were definitely 6.
There was some inbreeding symptoms in captive birds but not too harmful in that they all died or anything like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritius_kestrel
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Lol I am not expert in genetics, but seems that diferent animals differ in their resistence in expression of inbred genes, and it seems that after several generations, inbred individuals apparenty adapt and recover from genetic imbalance of inbred genes and related phenotipic features.

I taught it is not possible to recover some species, if there is not at least 12 genetically different founders.
 
Chlidonias said:
there's lots of info on the internet about the Mauritius kestrel recovery. This article is concise and has references at the bottom: Mauritius kestrel: A conservation success story - Scientific American Blog Network

Island species tend to be very resilient against inbreeding, probably because they descend from small populations originally and deleterious genes have long ago been weeded out. There are many examples of insular species rebounding from lows of just a few individuals with no apparent bad effects.
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That is to wonderfull information, I've never heard of. Great. But that's probably case for animal species from very smaller islands, not like Sumatra, is that can count for islands mamalls, for example for Javan rhinoceros?
 
I am affarid also for:

Sumatran rhinoceros
Numbat
Golden island lancehead
Balkan subspecies of Eurasian lynx
Indochinese tiger (in wild)
Kagu
Orinoco river Crocodile
Indian vulture
Red headed vulture
White-rumped vulture
Black rhinoceros
Aye-aye
Regent honeyeater
Dwarf crocodile (in wild)
Endangered sea snakes
Threatened sea turtles
Threatened corals
West African giraffe
Bornean elephant
Gharial
Sri lankan leopard (in wild)
Philipinian harpy eagle (monkey eating eagle)
Doucs (3 species)
Chinese pangolin
Utila spiny tailed iguana
Bay cat (Borneo)
 
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Arizona Docent said:
South China tiger (which may or may not be a valid subspecies) exists only in captivity for quite some time and I see no reason why the captive population would die out. As you may or may not know there is a recent rewilding and breeding compound set up in South Africa (though this is not without controversy).
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Not sure if there has been any new information on this topic as it's been maybe a year since I last heard anything about it, but I believe most of the animals labeled as "P. t. amoyensis" are believed to be either Indochinese Tigers or hybrids of the two. This unfortunately includes the animals in the South African complex. If the South China Tiger proves to be a valid subspecies, it is likely either completely Extinct or only present in a small handful of pure individuals between maybe two zoos in China.

The Chinese member Baboon could probably offer a more up-to-date summary of the situation. He was the source of my information as well.

~Thylo:cool:
 
Nikola Chavkosk said:
That is to wonderfull information, I've never heard of. Great. But that's probably case for animal species from very smaller islands, not like Sumatra, is that can count for islands mamalls, for example for Javan rhinoceros?
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yes, for smaller oceanic islands. Other examples besides the aforementioned Mauritius kestrel include the Mauritius echo parakeet (c.580 birds today from only c.10 birds in the 1980s), Mauritius pink pigeon (c.395 birds today from c.20 birds in the 1970s), Seychelles magpie-robin (c.200 birds today from 12-15 birds in 1965), Chatham Island black robin (c.200 birds today, all from one pair in the 1980s), Laysan duck (over 600 today, from 12 birds in 1912). It wouldn't be difficult to find more examples.

Continental islands such as Java or Sumatra, however, are basically sections of the continent which have been separated by rising sea levels, so they came complete with existing large animal stocks. Not the same situation at all.

However continental species can still recover amazingly if given the chance. The crested ibis has a wild population of c.500 birds in China, all descended from two pairs at a remnant colony discovered in 1981. The European bison has a wild population of c.1800 today, all from 12 founders. The Pere David's deer population is in the thousands, all from 11 founders. There are a number of other species in similar situations.
 
animal_expert01 said:
Only 22 gibbons left now
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no, there are more than 22. I wondered where you got that number from - I figure Wikipedia where it says "The most recent count found 22 Hainan gibbons split between two families, one of 11 and one of seven members, with four loners, all residing in Bawangling National Nature Reserve on Hainan Island", but that line (repeated endlessly on other sites) lacks a reference or footnote and actually comes from 2010 research. There are probably between 26 and 28 individuals currently on Hainan (see BBC - Earth - World's rarest ape is teetering on the edge of extinction).
 
ThylacineAlive said:
I'd imagine they are referring to Achatinella apexfulva, which has been reduced to a single male individual kept at the University of Hawaii. An article on the animal can be found here: The last snail: conservation and extinction in Hawai?i | Thom van Dooren
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thanks for that. That does seem to be the case, although it is a poorly-written article (e.g. the snails are hermaphroditic, so the animal isn't a "he") and there is precious little information about the species otherwise.
 
Chlidonias said:
thanks for that. That does seem to be the case, although it is a poorly-written article (e.g. the snails are hermaphroditic, so the animal isn't a "he") and there is precious little information about the species otherwise.
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No problem.

The same Wikipedia page that I originally found that information a while back also lists the snail species Partula faba as being reduced to one individual behind the scenes at Bristol Zoo, though I'm denied from opening the listed reference for some reason.

~Thylo:cool:
 
Unless something catastrophic has happened such as a pathogen getting through the biocontainment - not impossible, as one species which was doing well in captivity became extinct in the 1990's due to this occurring - Bristol Zoo holds a single colony of P. faba, rather than a single individual.

Regarding the aforementioned taxon, I have found a post I made on the subject some time ago which I shall quote rather than re-hashing old ground:

TeaLovingDave said:
That would be Partula turgida, which was doing reasonably well at London Zoo until a protozoan disease got into the colony of 296 individuals, and killed every single one over the course of 21 months. The last one died on January 1st 1996.

As quite a lot of the extant species have populations rather lower than this, and no one is sure whether they are equally vulnerable to said protozoan infection, it may not be the last species to end thus - although since the demise of the turgida snail biosecurity precautions have been increased rather a lot!
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I think the Wikipedia page referred to may be the one for "endling" (a word I had never heard of before, and a particularly stupid word in my opinion). Anyway that page says "A tank in the Bristol Zoo is the last refuge of Partula faba, a land snail from Ra'iātea in French Polynesia. The population dropped from 38 in 2012[19] to one in 2015.[20]"

The reference for [20] is Captain Cook's bean snail Partula faba where it says "Over the past 20 years the captive population has declined slowly. They have bred, but always at slightly less than the replacement rate. Today just one snail survives, making this the rarest of all living animals."
 
Ouch :( quite the rapid decline, then - the numbers in 2010 were reported to be 88, if memory serves, so it does somewhat sound like a pathogen might have compromised the population if it halved in the space of two years.
 
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