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Animals Never to Return |
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By Néfer Muñoz*
In Mexico and Central America, 23 animal species have become extinct and another six survive only in captivity.
SAN JOSE - If Christopher Columbus were to visit the Americas in 2002, he would no longer find some of the animals that amazed him when he made his first voyage to the region 510 years ago.
One of the species that caught his attention, and which he spoke about upon returning to Europe, was a seal that was called at that time the "sea wolf". It measured as long as 2.7 meters and dark brown back and a gray belly. It was the Caribbean monk seal (Monachus tropicalis), and it no longer exists today.
This marine mammal survived nearly five centuries after the arrival of the Spaniards in the Americas. But in 1954 disappeared from the coasts of Central America and Mexico, in large part due to over-hunting.
The monk seal is just one of the species that has become extinct in the relatively recent past. And its fate could be repeated by any of the species included on the Red List of Threatened Species 2002, an enumeration of the Earth's biodiversity that is at risk, drawn up by the non-governmental World Conservation Union (IUCN).
"The disappearance of species is a phenomenon throughout the history of the planet, but never has the process been as accelerated as it is today, largely as a result of human intervention," Enrique Lahmann, IUCN director for Mesoamerica, told Tierramérica.
The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), for example, is the protagonist of a similar but almost unbelievable story.
Until the 19th century, this pigeon with blue-gray, reddish and white feathers was the most abundant bird in the world. It is estimated that in North America and part of Central America alone there were more than two billion flying the skies and roosting in the trees.
The last of these wild birds were killed in 1900. And in 1914, the last migratory dove in captivity died.
The capture of these birds for their tasty meat caused a dramatic reduction in the overall population, which then made the species vulnerable to various diseases. Other aspects that contributed to the pigeon's disappearance were the lack of food: the fruit of the dwindling stands of oak and beech trees.
"This is just one example of what can happen if humans go too far in altering the functioning of the ecological dynamic," biologist Ana Virginia Mata, an IUCN consultant, told Tierramérica.
It is very important "not to reduce abruptly the population size of a species so as to ensure that in case of a catastrophe or other extreme situation some individuals can survive -- the strongest and fittest -- in order to reproduce and thus reinstate the species," explained Mata.
On the IUCN's new Red List, published this month, there are 23 animal species that can no longer be found in Mesoamerica, that is, southern Mexico and Central America.
These include a falcon native to Mexico's Guadalupe Island, several freshwater fish species, a rodent of the Honduran rain forest and the Atitlán diver, a Guatemalan sea bird.
And the disappearance of species from an ecosystem, warn scientists, has social repercussions because as one natural resource -- including plants and animals -- is exhausted, other natural sources for production are hurt. In the long term, this reduces a society's economic potential.
The Red List also contains animal species that today survive only in captivity in the Mesoamerican region: five freshwater fish species, including the 'biznaguita' and the 'perrito de Potosí', and a Mexican bird, known locally as the dove of Socorro Island.
* Néfer Muñoz is an IPS correspondent.
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