Just conservation scientist things: seeing a post about how people need to help save a critically endangered species and knowing that it’s way too late to save that species.
But species have been saved by bringing the last handful of individuals into captivity, and breeding a new population which is then released back into the wild. When do we say it’s too late?
I wouldn’t say any of those species are “saved.” You’ve gone from a handful of individuals to populations that are only in the 100′s or species that are found only in captivity.
Having so few indiviudals also creates a bottleneck effect that just dramatically decreases the genetic variation of the species.
When conversations working with that specific species say it’s too late. It depends species to species on a range of things; how fast the decline is, how good the conservation efforts are going, and so on.
Their success on release is also highly variable based on whether their environment has improved, how much, if their behavior can change, if it’s safe to release them from captivity, how quickly or slowly they breed, if they suffer harmful effects during migration. Sometimes they can be saved by dramatic action, sometimes it’s impossible as their population has declined too far already. The Passenger Pigeon, for example, needed a minimum of approximately 3000 birds per flock to have a sustainable population. That cannot be achieved by the few breeding pairs, which were unhappy and unhealthy, lacking their natural diet and socialization.
Yep, great addition!
There’s lots of models and stats that go into helping scientists calculate this (I’ve always been bad at math so don’t ask me to explain them in detail) and it changes species to species.
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