Is extinction forever?

Abstract

Mistrust of science has seeped into public perception of the most fundamental aspect of conservation-extinction. The term ought to be straightforward, and yet, there is a disconnect between scientific discussion and public views. This is not a mere semantic issue, rather one of communication. Within a population dynamics context, we say that a species went locally extinct, later to document its return. Conveying our findings matters, for when we use local extinction, an essentially nonsensical phrase, rather than extirpation, which is what is meant, then we contribute to, if not create outright, a problem for public understanding of conservation, particularly as local extinction is often shortened to extinction in media sources. The public that receives the message of our research void of context and modifiers comes away with the idea that extinction is not forever or, worse for conservation as a whole, that an extinction crisis has been invented.

Keywords: conservation; extinction; extirpation; mistrust of science; public understanding of science.

Figure 1.

Extant extinct species. Species designated as “extinct” in a sample of five Neotropical bird studies, although all 158 species are extant, 92% of the species are of “least concern” according to the IUCN. IUCN listings: critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, near threatened, least concern. Source: 1 = Kattan et al. (1994), 2 = Leck (1979), 3 = Ribon et al. (2003), 4 = Robinson (1999, 2001), 5 = Stouffer et al. (2009, 2011).

Figure 2.

An examination of the scientific literature (2045 journal papers) shows that extinction has become conflated with the relatively more benign term extirpation, even though the latter is what is meant in the vast majority of cases.

Figure 3.

Prevalence of the terms extinction, extirpation, and local extinction (note the different scale), per Google’s ngram (run 14 January 2015), from 1800 to present. Usage of extinction has been more or less stable, usage of extirpation has declined steadily, and usage of local extinction spiked upward beginning in the late 1960s.

Figure 4.

An example of how the message about “extinction” changed from the initial research paper through press release and public media to social media. Note how defaunation became local extinction, which itself became extinction (or species extinction).