Destruction of flora and fauna. Environmental problems of animals

All living beings perfectly adapted to environmental conditions. That is, to the impact of other living beings, as well as inanimate nature (for example, solar and cosmic rays). Each organism - and bacteria, and oak, and stork, and man - also affects other living beings, and on wildlife. Thus, everything in it is interconnected.

ecological balance. Any change in the relationships established in nature leads to the most unexpected consequences: organisms are forced to adapt to new conditions - or die. For example, deer and a pack of wolves lived on one of the northern islands. Wolves hunted deer, the herd ran away, and those who were weak or sick died. People decided to help the horned ones and removed predators from the island. At first everything was great. The number of deer has increased. They filled the entire island and ate almost all the lichen and other food. Hunger and disease set in. Because of this, all the deer died out. It is dangerous to disturb the ecological balance in an ecosystem by strong interference - this is what the example of this ecological catastrophe teaches.

ecological system(“ecosystem”) is all organisms that exist in one habitat, and everything that affects their life is an old stump inhabited by arthropods, fungi, bacteria, and a forest in which the old stump rots. The entire planet Earth is a single ecological system. If the ecological balance in any ecosystem changes, the number of organisms also changes. Up to the point that some biological species disappear. So the dodo disappeared. This huge flightless pigeon, similar to a turkey, lived in the forests of the island of Mauritius and disappeared in the 19th century. main reason death: pigs were brought to the island. And the pigs destroyed the nests of the dodo, which were located on the ground.

Ecology and new conditions. In the 20th century, a new type of impact on ecosystems appeared - modern industry. And it became clear: it can destroy nature. During the 20th century, thousands of species of animals and plants that inhabited the Earth somehow imperceptibly disappeared. This is what the 20th century brought undesirable.

Vegetation destruction. Forests are cut down without planting new trees. The Amazon forests are dying. And they provide about ½ of all the oxygen that all green plants on Earth produce. They absorb ¼ of carbon dioxide. The coniferous forests of Siberia are also cut down. Plus, they keep on burning. Inept plowing destroys the soil, and “black storms” arise: the wind raises and carries away the clouds of the earth. But the destruction of habitats is the first reason for the extinction of animals. When they have nowhere to live, nowhere to graze or hunt, nowhere to make a den and take their children out, when there is not enough food, then the number of the species falls. This is clearly seen in the example of the tiger, orangutan, panda and elephant.

Predatory hunting- the easiest way to destroy a species. So the tour, the passenger pigeon, the sea cow and the quagga zebra were destroyed. The buffalo nearly died as well.

"Greenhouse effect" leads to a gradual increase in temperature on Earth. As a result, seemingly imperceptibly, the climate is changing, the level of the oceans is rising, the fiefs are melting, and the droughts are getting worse. And how it will all end is difficult to predict. The Earth is not only heated by the rays of the Sun - it also gives off part of this heat into space. Today, the number of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere is increasing. There are more other gases that were almost non-existent before. They don't "fire" heat rays back into space, and the heat is retained in the atmosphere. So in greenhouses the film retains heat. These gases are formed largely as a result of the work industrial enterprises.

Air pollution. Exhaust pipes of cars, pipes of factories and power plants release millions of tons of carbon monoxide and other toxic substances into the air. These substances cause respiratory diseases, penetrate through the lungs into the blood. When such substances dissolve in raindrops, they form different acids, which are called acid rain. They destroy vegetation, aquatic animals. Such rain is also harmful for hair - in the city you should not stay in the rain with your head uncovered.

Water and soil pollution. Only a few substances that have entered the soil and water are decomposed by bacteria and fungi into harmless components.

Heavy metals cause slow poisoning. Such is the lead that gets from car exhaust into the air, then into the kidney, and finally into plants and fungi. Therefore, nothing that grows along the highway should be eaten.

Wastewater industrial enterprises, mineral fertilizers and pesticides washed off the fields are dangerous. Pesticides are substances used to control insects (insecticides), weeds (herbicides) and to remove leaves (defoliants). Defoliants may contain a very strong poison, dioxin, which destroys the body and causes the birth of not fully developed children. Dioxin is also released during the combustion of many plastics. So, for example, at one time the bird that is on the US coat of arms, the bald eagle, almost disappeared. It was pesticides that ruined it. They got into the water and dangerously concentrated along the food chain in the bodies of fish. That is, in the food of an eagle. The measures taken by environmental scientists, nevertheless, helped to increase the number of sea eagles.

food chains. Although the molecules of hazardous substances are dispersed in water, in the soil, they quickly "collect" (concentrate) in the human body. This is due to food chains. For example, such a chain: in the sea, phytoplankton creates, thanks to photosynthesis, nutrients; it is eaten by zooplankton: it, in turn, is the food of small fish; finally, a large cod gets caught in the net and ends up on the table. If a harmful substance enters the sea, its molecules penetrate the phytoplankton. And already along the “food chain” in cod, this substance accumulates so much that it is harmful to eat such fish.

Extinction. Ecological changes lead to the gradual extinction of sensitive animals and plants. Several examples show what undesirable changes in ecosystems lead to.

Tiger, once the lord of the forests of South Asia, the Far East, is now rare. The forests where he hunted became economic coals. Deer and wild boars are almost gone. Moreover, tiger bones are used in traditional oriental medicine. Because of this, poachers kill animals. Reserves are the last shelter of this beast. There are barely 10,000 tigers left. And three subspecies have already disappeared forever - this is the tiger of the island of Bali, the island of Java and the Turanian.

sea ​​turtles- in danger. They often mistake plastic bags floating in the water for their food - jellyfish. And when they grab this garbage with their jaws, they suffocate. Sea turtle eggs ripen in the warm sand on the deserted beaches of the islands. When newborn turtles get out of the sand and crawl to the sea, they are overtaken by birds. Only a few lucky people make it to the water. And long before birds, tasty turtle eggs are often dug up by people.

Giant panda- It's a giant raccoon. Lives in bamboo mountain forests, at an altitude of 3000 meters. The panda looks so much like a non-bear that it is called the "bamboo bear". It feeds only on leaves and young shoots of bamboo. Cutting down bamboo kills pandas too. But the panda is a symbol of the World Wide Fund for the Protection of Wild Animals.

african animals are also in danger. Among them are gorilla, chimpanzee. Rhinos are also dying. About 6,000 white rhinos survived, less than 16,000 black ones. Harmless animals are destroyed by the belief about the miraculous healing power of potions prepared from rhinoceros horn.

Bad ecology is a threat to everyone. The human body is as much a part of nature as the body of any living being. And everything that oppresses and destroys animals and plants is detrimental to humans as well. Therefore, everything with which a person has harmed nature returns to him and other people: spoiled water, contaminated food, poisoned air. And this leads to diseases that are difficult to recognize. You can’t console yourself: “Of course, it’s bad that a poisonous substance was dumped into the Pacific Ocean ... But it’s so far from us.” Not! Ecology has long proved that everything in nature is closely connected.

Saving nature. This is a task for every person. Much can be done to solve it. But we need everyday, thoughtful, very big work. The first condition is human awareness of the consequences of further destruction of nature. Yes, mankind cannot exist without industry, without power plants, without atomic energy. But it will also not be able to exist if it does not follow the wise Russian proverb: "Do not spit in the well - it will come in handy to drink water." It must be realized that the "well" that must not be polluted is the world ocean, it is forests, fields, cities of all continents.

Moral attitude towards nature is the second condition for its salvation and preservation. One must always feel and know what can be done in relation to animals, plants, and all nature. And what cannot be done is unacceptable. You need to understand: a hawk, a wolf, a swamp mud, a frog, a worm - all these are living creatures that have the right to life. Regardless of whether we see the benefits of these organisms or not.

In nature, animals face a lot of threats to their own existence - here and abrupt climate changes, and predators who also need something to eat, and unexpected epidemics - but the biggest threat to the animal world has always been a man with his indestructible craving for murder. We have selected 10 species of animals that have been exterminated by man. Let's see what we've lost.

tasmanian wolf

The Tasmanian or marsupial wolf, also known as the thylacine, lived on the territory of mainland Australia and the island of New Guinea. For the first time, its habitat was changed after dingo dogs were transported to New Guinea by people. The latter pushed the marsupial wolf out of its usual habitat, and in our time he “moved” to live on the island of Tasmania.

Local Australian farmers considered him a potential threat to the sheep and therefore mercilessly exterminated the wolves, without attaching any importance to where they saw him and whether he was a threat to others.

“Many believe that the cruel and unjustified extermination of wolves could not lead to the complete extinction of an entire species of animals and blame it on some unknown disease that allegedly wiped out the entire thylacine population,” says Thomas Prowse from the Australian University of Adelaide.

However, scientists have studied this issue for a very long time and comprehensively, using various models, and found that only a person is responsible for the extermination of the Tasmanian wolves.
It is believed that the last marsupial wolf was killed on May 13, 1930, and in 1936 in one of the zoos in Australia the last marsupial wolf kept in captivity died of old age.

Year of total disappearance: 1936

woolly mammoth

It is believed that this type of mammoth first appeared in Siberia about 300-250 thousand years ago and gradually spread to Europe and North America. The dimensions of the mammoths were not as huge as most people who are not too familiar with history believe: they were only slightly larger than modern elephants.

Mammoths lived in groups led by an older female and constantly moved from place to place, since an adult mammoth needed about 180 kilograms of food daily. Which - and this is obvious - does not involve marking time in one place.

The fully woolly mammoth disappeared about 10,000 years ago. And although there are many theories why they became extinct (loss of genetic diversity, climate change, epidemic outbreak, etc.), modern research more and more often they are inclined to believe that it was the human hand that dealt the final blow to this type of mammoth.

Time of complete extinction: 10,000 years ago

Dodo or Mauritian Dodo

The Mauritian dodo has long been considered a mythical bird whose existence was completely made up and did not actually exist in nature. But after specially organized expeditions to Mauritius discovered the remains of a bird, society had to accept the fact that the bird existed and it was people who became the reason for its extermination.

The Dodo lived in Mauritius for several centuries, completely unafraid of its natural enemies, which simply did not exist on the island. That is why the bird was flightless - she simply had no one to hide from.

The bird was first seen in 1598 by Dutch sailors, and literally 100 years later it was completely exterminated - both the travelers themselves and the animals brought to Mauritius by the colonists tried their best. Still, think for yourself how attractive a dinner was for sailors from a 20-kilogram bird, the closest relatives of which are modern pigeons.

Year of complete extinction: presumably 1681

Sea cow

The sea or Steller's cow was discovered in 1741 by the expedition of Vitus Bering and got its name in honor of the expedition doctor Georg Steller, who was not too lazy to describe the sea cow from all sides and it is his descriptions that are still considered the most complete.

Steller's cow lived off the coast of the Commander Islands and had not only low mobility, huge size and a complete lack of fear of humans, but also delicious meat. The latter was the reason that less than 30 years after its discovery, the sea cow was completely exterminated.

Sailors ate its meat, used cow fat for food and for lighting, and boats were made from the skin. In a word, they used everything they could reach. At the same time, the capture and killing of sea cows was often unjustifiably cruel and senseless: “Often, hunters simply threw spears at the sea cow, and then let it swim away, hoping that the animal would die and its corpse would be washed ashore.”

Year of complete extinction: 1768

Passenger pigeon

Passenger dove before early XIX century was one of the most common birds on Earth, its population numbered up to five billion individuals. However, this number of birds was not enough for the pigeons to survive. Passenger pigeons that lived in the territory of the modern USA and Canada were the subject of active hunting by colonists arriving in America.

The decrease in the number of pigeons took place at a more or less smooth pace somewhere until 1870, after which, in less than 20 years, it decreased simply catastrophically and the last pigeon in wild nature was seen in 1900. In captivity, passenger pigeons lasted until 1914, when the last bird named Martha died at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Year of total disappearance: 1914

North African cow antelope

Cow antelopes are a subfamily of large antelopes found in Africa. There are several species of them, but this particular species had practically disappeared from the map of the Earth by the beginning of the 20th century. The hunt for them was so active that for the last few decades of its existence, the last individuals of cow antelopes were found only in truly inaccessible places in several African states, until they completely died out by the middle of the last century.

Year of total disappearance: 1954

Javan tiger

Back in the 19th century, the Javan tiger was found throughout the island of Java and regularly annoyed its inhabitants. Maybe this was one of the reasons for the active hunt for him, and maybe something else, but the fact remains: by 1950, only 20-25 individuals remained alive on the island.

Moreover, half of these tigers lived on the territory of a specially created reserve. But even this was not enough to save the population, and in 1970 their number was reduced to seven individuals. The exact time of extinction of the Javan tigers remains unknown, but most likely it happened in the mid-1970s.

From time to time there are reports that a Javan tiger has been seen again in Java, or even a mother with several cubs, but there is no documentary evidence that tigers have actually survived in nature.

Year of complete extinction: circa 1970

Zanzibar leopard

The eradication of the Zanzibar leopard is both similar and unlike the extermination of the rest of the species on our list. They killed the leopard, they killed it purposefully and very actively, they announced the hunt for animals and went to them with the whole village. However, this was not done for the sake of its meat or skin, and not in order to protect the village and livestock from potential attacks of the animal. The fact is that the population of the Zanzibar archipelago was firmly convinced that these leopards were connected with witches, that evil witches specially bred and trained these animals to help themselves, and then sent leopards to do black deeds for them.

An extermination campaign began in the second half of the 1960s, and after some 30 years there were almost no Zanzibar leopards left in the wild. Scientists began sounding the alarm in the early 90s of the last century, but a few years later the conservation program was curtailed as unpromising.

Year of complete extinction: 1990s

Pyrenean ibex

One of the four species of Spanish wild goat known to science, which, unlike the others, was not lucky to survive to this day. Last famous representative of this species died a completely ridiculous death - it was crushed by a fallen tree.

Scientists managed to take samples of his DNA and they made an attempt to create a clone of an ibex, but, unfortunately, the cloned cub died shortly after birth due to various birth defects.

Year of complete extinction: around 2000

Western black rhinoceros

This subspecies of the black rhino was declared extinct just a couple of years ago. He became a victim of regular hunting in his habitat, in Cameroon. Rhino horns, used in Chinese medicine to treat numerous diseases, were considered the most valuable for poachers.

Scientists have been actively looking for survivors of this species since 2006. However, since their search failed for five years, the western black rhinoceros was declared extinct. Other species of black rhinoceros are also under the threat of extinction.

Year of complete extinction: 2011

1. After being polluted or destroyed, it will take many years (sometimes hundreds or even thousands) of habitats for these places to be available for the development and life of animals.
2. Pollution and destruction change the balance in nature. Each species in its habitat (for example, trees, swamps or forests) is the home of animals.
3. If one animal, bird or insect disappears, all other animal species suffer as well, as the food chain is disrupted.
4. Many modern hunters do not just kill animals for food - they kill for profit. That is why so many rare and protected animals are on the verge of extinction.

Story

Let us turn to the turn of the century, past and present. The population, especially from the poor classes, was completely illiterate, did not know either the press or the radio. Where could an unlucky commoner know what kind of animal or bird to shoot ... And here is the need, and the tempting benefits of hunting. Anyone who took a gun in his hands fancied himself a catcher, on whom, as they say, even the beast runs. In such conditions, few people considered the ban. And now? Any amount of information. Radio and television have firmly entered everyday life, it is difficult to find an adult who does not read newspapers. It's about not about literacy, but about responsibility for the future.

In 1981, there were 15,000 black rhinoceros in Africa, today, due to illegal hunting, their number will not reach 4,500 individuals. In 1970 there were 1.3 million African elephants. Today, due to poaching, there are fewer than 85,000 of them. In the 1940s, 90% of skins and furs were from wild animals. Today this figure is 15%. This is because most of today's producers raise animals for their skin and fur, raise them and kill them.

Data

It is difficult to give exhaustive information about the extinct species of our fauna. It is known from official sources that the beginning of a sharp decrease in the number and disappearance of certain species of animals and birds falls on the 50s of the 18th century. By 1850, 35 animal species had disappeared. And over the next hundred years, from 1850 to 1951, 71 representatives of the terrestrial fauna disappeared. Since 1947 in the UK, for example: 50% of the forests have disappeared, 50% of the swamps have disappeared, 95% of the meadows have disappeared.

To date, 107 species of mammals and 160 species of birds have irretrievably disappeared; Of these, 53 are victims of natural change, and 214 are human victims. It would be appropriate to recall that over 600 species of vertebrates are now endangered on our planet. Due to the expansion of human economic activity and a number of other factors, at different times ceased to exist: quagga zebra, blue antelope, giant llama, Atlas bear, cave lion, tour (primitive bull), tarpan, sea cow, wild donkey, giant deer, wingless loon, crested shelduck, epiornis, more than 20 subspecies of moas, dodos, Labrador eider, Carolina parrot and 10 species of other parrots, 25 species of the passerine family, 4 species of starlings, hundreds of other mammals, amphibians, reptiles...

In fact, direct persecution brought to naught very few species, namely those that were not adapted to resistance.

A classic example of such destruction, and at the same time in the shortest possible time, remains the sea cow of the Commander Islands.

Steller's sea cow was met by Russians only on the Commander Islands and was quickly exterminated there. There is little known evidence that it was common on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in places much more southerly. A note to chapter XCII of the Beijing edition of Marco Polo, taken from the Chinese chronicles, says the following: “Under the year 1267 there is an indication that in the 9th moon, messengers arrived from the khan to Korea with a letter to the king. Khubilai asked for the skin of a special fish called "Ahirho-Munho" and similar to a cow. The messengers were told that since the khan had swollen feet, boots made from the skin of this fish would be useful to him, and the next month the king of Korea sent 17 skins to the khan. It is suggested that Ahirho-Munho is nothing more than the sea cow described by Steller. (The book of Marco Polo, a citizen of Venice ... written down under the dictation of the author in 1295 by Rustignan of Pisa, reviewed and corrected by Marco Polo himself in 1397, published by Pottier in 1867, translated into modern French and annotated from Chinese sources by Charignon, vol. 1-3, edition of Nachbaur , Beijing, 1924-1928) (fr.).

Undoubtedly, man in very ancient times exterminated the musk ox throughout Eurasia, as evidenced by the extreme helplessness that this animal shows in front of man, which is clearly seen from the descriptions of the hunting of this ungulate by the natives of Arctic America. V. Stefanson was one of the few people of science who happened to participate in such a "hunt" themselves, and he wittily compares it with the slaughter of cows on a farm.

As already mentioned, I. G. Pidoplichko convincingly showed the full probability of the extermination of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros by man. Primitive bulls were exterminated by man in Siberia, and this, obviously, happened much earlier than in Europe, and wild horses, but the speed of their disappearance was associated with adverse climate change. You can also point to the extreme reduction in the distribution and number of sea otters - sea otters and river beavers, but these animals, having survived to our era, survived and successfully reproduce.

The speed and the very possibility of the extermination of animals by man depend on how much the pursued animal is valued. In order for the fishery to be carried out, earnings from the day's production must justify the work of the hunter. As an animal becomes rare, its extraction becomes more laborious and the profitability of fishing decreases, even if the cost of the extracted one increases. Thus, a decrease in numbers caused a decrease in prey, fishing lost its intensity, and the species received a respite.

The level of livestock at which fishing declined or ceased varied and depended on the value of the pelt. In the 17th century, Russian hunters stopped sable hunting when the "dinner" (the hunter's share) of a member of the artel reached another 10-15 animals. This was due to the high cost of flour and hunting equipment and the high costs of long-distance visits to the lands, which made such prey unprofitable. In the 19th century, 3-5 sables were such a size. At the beginning of the 20th century, 1-2 sables per season were considered enviable prey. At the same time, sable became so rare and preserved in such hard-to-reach areas that only individuals who went to this difficult and dangerous trade not so much because of the earnings themselves, but because they were driven by an indestructible hunting passion and habit, could get it.

Another example is a squirrel. In Siberia, in most regions, 18-20 animals per day were considered good prey, and 15 small ones were considered small. With the extraction of 8-10 squirrels per day, there were few hunters to protein. The prospect of killing 5-6 animals was considered a "total absence" of the squirrel, and this view continues in the main hunting areas to this day. Meanwhile, in the north of European Russia, in conditions of greater need of the population and significant development of the extraction of upland game, which gave a satisfactory income, protein production with an output of 1-2 squirrels per day was considered appropriate.

In some cases, the rapid decline in the number of animals itself served as the cause of a process that prevented their complete destruction. This is what happened in Siberia with maral. The high cost of antlers caused a fierce persecution of this beast, and already in the middle of the last century it was almost completely destroyed. But the inquisitive Siberians created a kind of economic branch - deer breeding, the development of which gave the market a large number of velvet antlers, their price fell, the very laborious pursuit of wild antlers became unprofitable, and the deer got a serious respite. If it were not for this, the deer would hardly be found among the animals of the Siberian fauna now.

If the history of Siberia knows cases of the destruction of entire species of mammals, then the bird fauna almost does not give us such examples. This is explained by the fact that feather hunting in Siberia has never been of great economic importance and was purely an incidental activity. Two facts can be mentioned. First, the fate of the pelican in the Baikal region. As V.V. Lamakin established, this beautiful bird lived in significant numbers on Goose Lake in the Selenga River basin at the beginning of the 18th century, but by the end of it it was no longer found there at all. Archpriest Avvakum, and later Georgi, an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences of the 18th century, discovered a pelican on Lake Baikal, where later he did not meet at all until flying into last years that was established by T. N. Gagina. It is obvious that the pelican nests were devastated and the birds were exterminated.

The second example is the fate of the lamb. Carefully collected facts led T. N. Gagina to the conviction that the disappearance of this giant predator from the limits of Eastern Siberia was caused by human persecution, since lamb feathers were of great value in the distant past. There is no other explanation for his disappearance yet.

It is especially necessary to consider the significance of the direct extermination of animals by man in the process of combating predators and pests. Such a struggle was already waged in antiquity, and it is considered proven in literature that in this way, for example, lions were exterminated in Europe and Asia Minor even before our era, as well as wolves in England in the 15th century. However, in Siberia, examples of this kind are found only in the modern period, and we will talk about them in their own place.

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tasmanian wolf

The Tasmanian or marsupial wolf, also known as the thylacine, lived on the territory of mainland Australia and the island of New Guinea. For the first time, its habitat was changed after dingo dogs were transported to New Guinea by people. The latter pushed the marsupial wolf out of its usual habitat, and in our time it “moved” to live on the island of Tasmania. Local Australian farmers considered it a potential threat to sheep and therefore mercilessly exterminated wolves, without attaching any importance to where they saw and represented it whether he is a threat to others.

“Many believe that the cruel and unjustified extermination of wolves could not lead to the complete extinction of an entire species of animals and blame it on some unknown disease that supposedly wiped out the entire thylacine population,” says Thomas Prowse from the Australian University of Adelaide. However, scientists have studied this issue for a very long time and comprehensively, using various models, and found that only and exclusively people are responsible for the extermination of the Tasmanian wolves. It is believed that the last marsupial wolf was killed on May 13, 1930, and in 1936 in one of the zoos Astralii, the last marsupial wolf kept in captivity died of old age.

The last Tasmanian wolf, a dog-headed marsupial, died at an Australian zoo in 1936. And although for a long time it was believed that some unknown infection was responsible for the disappearance of an entire species of animals, which marsupial wolves allegedly contracted from dogs brought to Australia, in fact, the responsibility for the extermination of this species of wolves lies entirely with man.

Unfortunately, Tasmanian wolves are far from the only animal species that has been completely or partially destroyed by humans. Yes, in nature, animals face a lot of threats to their own existence - there are sudden climate changes, and predators who also need something to eat, and unexpected epidemics - but the biggest threat to the animal world has always been a man with his indestructible craving for food. murder. We have selected 10 species of animals that have been exterminated by man in order to show what we have lost.

Year of total disappearance: 1936

woolly mammoth

It is believed that this type of mammoth first appeared in Siberia about 300-250 thousand years ago and gradually spread to Europe and North America. The dimensions of the mammoths were not so huge, as most people who are not too familiar with history believe: they were only slightly larger than modern elephants. Mammoths lived in groups led by an older female, and constantly moved from place to place, since an adult mammoth needed about 180 kilograms food daily. Which - and this is obvious - does not involve marking time in one place.

The fully woolly mammoth disappeared about 10,000 years ago. And although there are many theories why they died out (loss of genetic diversity, climate change, an outbreak of an epidemic, etc.), modern studies are increasingly inclined to believe that it was the human hand that dealt the final blow to this species of mammoths. Time of complete extinction: 10,000 years ago

Dodo or Mauritian Dodo

The Mauritian dodo has long been considered a mythical bird whose existence was completely made up and did not actually exist in nature. But after expeditions specially organized to Mauritius discovered the remains of a bird, society had to accept the fact that the bird existed and it was people who became the reason for its extermination. Dodo lived in Mauritius for several centuries without fear of its natural enemies, which simply did not exist on the island. That is why the bird was flightless - she simply had no one to hide from.

The bird was first seen in 1598 by Dutch sailors, and literally 100 years later it was completely exterminated - both the travelers themselves and the animals brought to Mauritius by the colonists tried their best. Still, think for yourself how attractive a dinner was for sailors from a 20-kilogram bird, the closest relatives of which are modern pigeons.

Year of complete extinction: presumably 1681

Sea cow

The sea or Steller's cow was discovered in 1741 by the expedition of Vitus Bering and got its name in honor of the expedition doctor Georg Steller, who was not too lazy to describe the sea cow from all sides and it is his descriptions that are still considered the most complete.

Steller's cow lived off the coast of the Commander Islands and had not only low mobility, huge size and a complete lack of fear of humans, but also delicious meat. The latter was the reason that less than 30 years after its discovery, the sea cow was completely exterminated. The sailors ate its meat, used cow fat for food and for lighting, and made boats from the skin. In a word, they used everything they could reach. At the same time, the capture and killing of sea cows was often unjustifiably cruel and senseless: “Often, hunters simply threw spears at the sea cow, and then let it swim away, hoping that the animal would die and its corpse would be washed ashore.”

Year of complete extinction: 1768

Passenger pigeon)

The passenger pigeon was one of the most common birds on Earth until the beginning of the 19th century, its population numbered up to five billion individuals. However, this number of birds was not enough for the pigeons to survive. Passenger pigeons that lived in the territory of the modern USA and Canada were the subject of active hunting by colonists arriving in America.

The decline in the number of pigeons took place at a more or less smooth pace somewhere until 1870, after which, in less than 20 years, it decreased simply catastrophically and the last pigeon in the wild was seen in 1900. In captivity, passenger pigeons lasted until 1914, when the last bird named Martha died at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Year of complete extinction: 1124

North African cow antelope

Cow antelopes are a subfamily of large antelopes found in Africa. There are several species of them, but this particular species had practically disappeared from the map of the Earth by the beginning of the 20th century. The hunt for them was so active that for the last few decades of its existence, the last individuals of cow antelopes were found only in truly inaccessible places in several African states, until they completely died out by the middle of the last century.

Year of total disappearance: 1954

Javan tiger

Back in the 19th century, the Javan tiger was found throughout the island of Java and regularly annoyed its inhabitants. Maybe this was one of the reasons for the active hunt for him, and maybe something else, but the fact remains: by 1950, only 20-25 individuals remained alive on the island.

Moreover, half of these tigers lived on the territory of a specially created reserve. But even this was not enough to save the population, and in 1970 their number was reduced to seven individuals. The exact time of extinction of the Javan tigers remains unknown, but most likely it happened in the mid-1970s.

From time to time there are reports that a Javan tiger has been seen again in Java, or even a mother with several cubs, but there is no documentary evidence that tigers have actually survived in nature.

Year of complete extinction: circa 1970

Zanzibar leopard

The eradication of the Zanzibar leopard is both similar and unlike the extermination of the rest of the species on our list. They killed the leopard, they killed it purposefully and very actively, they announced the hunt for animals and went to them with the whole village. However, this was not done for the sake of its meat or skin, and not in order to protect the village and livestock from potential attacks of the animal. The fact is that the population of the Zanzibar archipelago was firmly convinced that these leopards were connected with witches, that evil witches specially bred and trained these animals to help themselves, and then sent leopards to do black deeds for them.

An extermination campaign began in the second half of the 1960s, and after some 30 years there were almost no Zanzibar leopards left in the wild. Scientists began sounding the alarm in the early 90s of the last century, but a few years later the conservation program was curtailed as unpromising.

Year of complete extinction: 1990s

Pyrenean ibex

One of the four species of Spanish wild goat known to science, which, unlike the others, was not lucky to survive to this day. The last known representative of this species died a completely ridiculous death - he was crushed by a fallen tree. Scientists managed to take samples of his DNA and they attempted to create a clone of an ibex, but, unfortunately, the cloned cub died shortly after birth due to various birth defects.

Year of complete extinction: around 2000

Western black rhinoceros

This subspecies of the black rhino was declared extinct just a couple of years ago. He became a victim of regular hunting in his habitat, in Cameroon. Rhino horns, used in Chinese medicine to treat numerous diseases, were considered the most valuable for poachers.

Scientists have been actively looking for survivors of this species since 2006. However, since their search failed for five years, the western black rhinoceros was declared extinct. Other species of black rhinoceros are also under the threat of extinction.

Year of complete extinction: 2011