Echoes of Extinction: A Funeral March for Species

Back in 2018, almost one third of Australia’s spectacled flying foxes population of seventy-five thousand died between November 26 and November 27, the second-largest mass die-off of flying foxes, and the first time it happened to this particular species.

In 2021, more than one billion sea creatures along the Vancouver coast perished, with experts estimating that a million mussels died in an area the size of a tennis court at one site in Galiano Island, an area between Vancouver Island and the lower mainland of British Columbia, while over 100 million barnacles died near a place called White Rock.

Between 2014 and 2016, about four million common murres died, with experts counting more than 62,000 common murre carcasses, the murre population in 13 colonies between the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea declining by anywhere from 52 to 78 percent.

Single-species mortality events such as these have become common, including others such as 10 million scallops dying in British Columbia in 2014, an estimated 30 percent of coral decimated in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia between 2016 and 2017, and thousands of salmon dead in the Pacific Northwest in the United States in 2021.

In Africa, single-species mortality events include the death of 5,000 Cape Fur seals along the coast of Namibia, the perishing of multiple elephant herds in Kenya and Tanzania in 2022, and drastic declines in African penguin colonies in Namibia and South Africa. In Asia, over 27 peacocks perished in Palam Air Base in New Delhi, India last year from heat.

Across three days before Christmas in 2019, temperatures exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to the death of 4,500 of the flying foxes at the Yarra Bend Park in Australia, 15 percent of the colony’s population.

Temperatures rose above 50 degrees Celsius along the coast and 40 degrees Celsius in Vancouver in 2021, causing the death of a variety of sea creatures, including mussels, clams, snails, barnacles, and others.

Temperatures rose by 2.5 to three degrees Celsius (4.5 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal levels in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea in the period between 2014 and 2016, and the common murres became the victims.

In essence, climate change-induced temperature increases lie behind the massive single-species losses in Alaska, Australia, and Canada, forming a part of the problem with the elephants in Kenya and Tanzania, the turtles in Indonesia, and the peacocks in India.

The loss of flying foxes means a reduction of their seed dispersal functions on eucalyptus trees, the favored foods of koalas, which can eat around 500 to 800 grams of the leaves per day, while the die-off of coral reefs also correlated to a 63 percent decline in biodiversity and 60 percent fall in the abundance of fish, negatively affecting coral ecosystem services valued at $9.9 trillion annually.

The reduced population of common murres means they may now face increased vulnerability to predators and environmental challenges, impacting negatively on their recovery, while the decline in the numbers of the African elephant population led to a loss of genetic diversity.

Plant species diversity declined with the sudden loss of pollinators, such as the removal by two scientists of a single bee species cutting flower seed production by one-third, while the risk of extinction rises with the cumulative impact of single-species mortality events.

In other words, the die-offs of flying foxes in Australia, the death of sea creatures on the coast of Vancouver, the deaths of the common murres in Australia, and single-species die-offs in other places impact on factors like genetic diversity of habitats, climate change, extinction risks, and others.

Stopping single species die-offs requires a multi-faceted approach that addresses the underlying causes of population decline, such as addressing climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and promoting climate-friendly ecosystems that can adapt to the changing environmental conditions.

What to Eat

Vegan food from Alaska, Credit, Alaskaair.com