GONE STORIES

’Akialoa - Hemignathus obscurus

Both the Polynesian and Latin names of this honeycreeper mean “curvebill.” All of the honeycreepers of the Hawaiian Island chain evolved to fill highly specialized niches; the ’akialoa’s deeply curved bill was perfectly suited for drinking nectar from the long corolla of native lobelia flowers. The lowlands forests of the Hawaiian Islands have been heavily logged, farmed, and invaded by plants from the mainland. As these “invader” species have replaced lobelias and other endemic flora once common to the islands, bird species have vanished. The Nature Conservancy estimates that one-half to two-thirds of all living things native to the Hawaiian Islands are in jeopardy or gone. Though there were once ’akialoa subspecies on four of the islands, the last of them died on Kauai in 1965.

Carolina parakeet - Conuropsis carolinensis

The only parrots native to eastern North America, Carolina parakeets were very sociable birds: flocking was central to their way of life, much as it was to the passenger pigeon. As Europeans colonized the eastern states, the birds quickly adapted to farmed grains and orchard fruits over wild sources. The settlers, who shot them to protect their crops, considered them pests and described the parakeets’ feeding habits as “particularly raucous and wantonly destructive.” These gregarious creatures had the unfortunate habit of shrieking and circling over their dead comrades, making it easy for angry settlers to decimate an entire flock. The birds were eradicated one locality at a time. For roosting and nesting, the parakeets favored the big, old-growth hardwood trees of bottomland habitats. These trees were often the first to be cut for timber to build barns and cabins on newly settled land. The last wild parakeet was shot in 1913, and the last captive died in a zoo in 1918.

Horns, blue buck - Hippotragus leucocephaeus

This heavyset antelope was the first documented African species to become extinct from over-hunting. The Portuguese, who arrived in South Africa in the 1600s, and each successive wave of European settlers, valued its blue-tinged pelt and plentiful meat. As the number of guns proliferated, the number of blue bucks plummeted. They had disappeared completely by the early 1800s.

Amistad gambusia - Gambusia amistadensis

This little fish used to inhabit Goodenough Springs, which once fed into the Rio Grande in Texas. The entire area of the spring was inundated with the creation of the Amistad Reservoir in 1968. Gambusia amistadensis were collected from the wild prior to the dam’s completion and captive populations were maintained at two aquariums until the late 1970s: one at Brackenridge Field Laboratory at the University of Texas in Austin and one at Dexter National Fish Laboratory in southeastern New Mexico. Hatchery errors occurred simultaneously at both labs and by 1980, all of the fish in both populations had died. The Amistad gambusia’s fate is an often-cited cautionary tale on the need for redundancy, data sharing, and long-term monitoring when maintaining captive populations of endangered species.

Thicktail chub - Gila crassicauda

Evidence of these tasty fish is abundant in the refuse middens of native Californians. In the 1800s, they were common in the fish markets of San Francisco and were served in saloons in Sacramento for only five cents. In addition to fishing pressure, the chub’s extinction was hastened by extreme habitat modifications of the Central Valley, including water diversion for irrigation and municipal use, flood controls on streams, drainage of large shallow lakes, removal of tule beds, and river channelization for easier ship passage. The introduction of voracious striped bass and largemouth bass for sport fishing sealed the chubs’ fate. By the 1970s, the species was gone.

Hula painted frog - Discoglossus nigriventer

Hula Lake lies just 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee on the border between Israel and Syria. This frog, unique to the swampy wetlands on the eastern side of the lake, was discovered in 1940. In the 1950s, 5,680 hectares of wetlands were converted to agricultural use to feed the growing population of settlers in Israel. Although 320 of those hectares were set aside as a preserve, this frog and other species endemic to the area have not been seen since 1955.

Stephens Island wren - Xenicus lyalli

In 1894 on Stephens Island, off the northern tip of New Zealand’s south island, the lighthouse keeper’s cat caught an unusual bird. An amateur ornithologist, the lighthouse keeper sent the specimen back to England, where it was recognized as a new genus and species. Sadly, in the following year, that same cat caught every last one of the small, nearly flightless, ground-nesting birds.

Skull, Tasmanian tiger - Thylacinus cynocephalus

Unique to Tasmania, this marsupial carnivore was first described as having “the head and teeth of a wolf, the stripes of a tiger, the tail of a kangaroo, and the pouch of a possum.” Like all other creatures called “wolf,” the thylacine had a reputation for bloodlust and senseless killing. In fact, there are no recorded attacks on humans, and fewer sheep were killed annually by thylacines than by the settlers’ own dogs. Nevertheless, the Tasmanian government and the Van Diemen’s Land Company instituted a bounty system for dead thylacines. Between 1888 and 1914, 2,268 carcasses were turned in for payment, though the actual number of animals killed was probably much higher. Canine distemper, probably spread by domestic dogs, ran through the remaining population. Relentlessly hunted, snared, baited, and trapped for 120 years, the Tasmanian tiger was finally granted full protection by the government in 1938. But it was much too late—the last thylacine had died at the Hobart Zoo in 1936.