This video was sponsored by Planet Wild. More about them at the end of the episode.
Here’s a hot take: Not enough species are extinct. Hi, I’m Kate, and this is MinuteEarth.
Wait a minute, I’m not saying I want more species to go extinct.
What I mean is that only 902 animal and plant species have been officially declared extinct
worldwide by the IUCN, the organization tasked with determining which species have gone extinct.
And if this seems like a really small number, that’s because it is; there are actually a lot
more than 902 extinct species out there. For starters, that number only includes
species that have gone extinct since 1500, so it doesn’t account for all the dinos and dimetrodons
and whatnot that disappeared long ago. And even if we just take a look at more
recent extinctions, there are still a lot of species that aren’t being counted.
First, because although there are somewhere around 2 million known species on our planet,
the IUCN only has the data and resources to closely track a tiny fraction of them. So
there are almost certainly species we know of that have gone extinct and we haven't noticed.
There are also tons of species out there that we don’t know exist in the first
place – somewhere between 3 million and 100 million, depending on who you ask. So
there are definitely species disappearing that we’ve never even identified in the first place.
So lots of extinct species aren't reflected in the official count. But these extinctions
are only part of what I mean when I say not enough species are extinct; there’s another
group of species that should maybe also count. See, the IUCN only declares a species extinct
when there is “no reasonable doubt that the last individual of a species has died.” But
there are 2,100 endangered species which nobody has spotted in at least a decade. They aren’t
“officially” extinct; they’re just…missing. Like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, whose last verified
sighting was 57 years ago. The Fat Catfish, which nobody has seen in 65 years. And the Blanco Blind
Salamander, which has been MIA for 71 years. Heck, a full quarter of missing species haven’t
been seen in over a hundred years. We could just take all the species
that have been missing for a certain length of time – say, 50 years – and
call them extinct…that sounds pretty reasonable! But the Seychelles Giant Tortoise was found alive
150 years after its presumed extinction, and the black-browed babbler showed up after having been
missing for 170 years. Then there’s the Coelacanth, a fish that paleontologists
only knew from 240-million-year-old fossils…until 1938, when a live one
was pulled out of the water near Madagasgar. So we can’t determine whether something is
extinct just by how long it’s been missing. Plus, if we label a species as o-fishally
extinct when it might not be, it could end any environmental protections actually keeping it
alive. That’s why the IUCN isn't willing to label any of these 2100 missing species as extinct,
even though most of them probably are! So maybe it does make sense to keep these
missing species in extinction limbo, even if that means keeping the official number
of extinctions way lower than we know it actually is…like way, way WAY lower.
If you care about extinction – in the anti-extinction kind of way, which I assume
our amazing viewers do, then I want to introduce you to Planet Wild, which sponsored this video.
Planet Wild’s not just a great new YouTube channel, it’s also a rewilding organization
that goes out on an incredible mission every single month to save a species from extinction.
The videos about their missions are great – they combine education with real world environmental
action in a super entertaining package. And their work is all driven by a community that anyone can
join. We’ve already joined it – we love that they tackle actual problems with very specific goals
and get real results, like when they removed every piece of trash and fishing gear off of a
species of endangered coral that lives near the coast of Spain. Check out their most recent
video about saving the aptly named Little Owl, which you can find in a few seconds right here…