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Forever Extinct, second series - #2 Fernandina Giant Tortoise (Chelonoidis phantasticus) The Fernandina Giant Tortoise has been see the last time in 1906 and believed to be extinct untill 2017, when the the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had flagged the Fernandina on its Red List first as possibly extinct and then as critically endangered.

Few days ago, a hundred years old Fernandina have been found in the Galapagos by Washington Tapia, who has been working on tortoise conservation for 30 years.

Tapia and his team are convinced that more Fernandinas may be alive, and if they will find them they will be able to restore the population's number and then return them to thier natural habitat.

. . Read more about this very good news here. . . . . . #foreverextinct #extinctionisforever #fernandinagianttortoise #illustrations #artonistagram #environmentalart #environmentalillustration #washingtontapia #imbackbitches #gianttortoise #gianttortoiserestoration

#foreverextinct #fernandinagianttortoise #illustrations #artontumblr

Forever Extinct, second series - The Desert Rain Frog

This very small amphibious, Breviceo macrops lives in the narrow strip of sandy shores between the sea and the sand dunes, and it is mainly found in Namibia and South Africa. Since 2016 it is considered threatened by habitat loss.

It is a nocturnes frog, its size is around 4 to 6 centimetres, the sand stick on its skin most of the time and its voice seams very like the ones from dogs toy, listen it here.

The frog's total habitat range is smaller than 2,000 square kilometres, the land is fragmented and the number of individual frogs seems to be decreasing.

Their natural habitat is shrinking due to opencast diamond mining, road construction, as well as increased human settlement.

#forever extinct #illustrations #rain desert frog #rebel art #art on tumblr

Forever Extinct #8 Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)

The only native parrot of North America, the Caolina Parakeet was the only species native to the eastern United States. It was found from southern New York and Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico, and lived in old forests along rivers.

The Carolina Parakeet has been extinct since 1918: the last known wild specimen was killed in Okeechobee County, Florida, in 1904, and the last captive bird died at the Cincinnati Zoo on February 21, 1918.

The Carolina Parakeet is believed to have died out because of a number of different threats: loss of their environment and habitat being one of the primary causes, but not the only one.

Indeed, the bird's colourful feathers (green body, yellow head, and red around the bill) were in demand as decorations in ladies' hats, and in addition the birds were also kept as pets and could be bred easily in captivity.

Finally, they were hunted and killed in large numbers because farmers considered them a pest and it has also been hypothesized that the introduced honeybee helped contribute to its extinction by taking many of the bird's nesting sites.

Beautiful Carolina Parakeet, forever lost because of human behaviour, greed and ignorance: in the end, only in 1938 people have realized this bird was actually extinct.

Lean more here:

http://johnjames.audubon.org/last-carolina-parakeet

Here:

https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/carpar/introduction

Here a video about Carolina Parakeet:

https://youtu.be/FEAS8GGZSYw

#Carolina parakeet #extinct bird #extinct forever #illustrations project #create awareness through art

Forever Extinct #7 – Chinese Pangolin (Manis pentadactyla)

The pangolin, often mistaken for a reptile, is actually a scaly-skinned mammal, today critically endangered and listed in the red list of the IUCN since 2013.

When pangolins feel to be in danger, they roll into a ball exposing only the hard scales for protection.

It is difficult to estimate the population size of those animals, but it is believed to be in strong decline due to the demand of pangolin meat and scales. They are indeed the most trafficked animals in Asia, plus nowadays their traffic is greatly increasing in Africa, too.

They are illegally mostly sold in Vietnam and China, places where their meat is considered a delicacy and their scales are used in traditional medicine, as remedy for different health issue - from asthma to rheumatisms - even if there are no evidences that they are effectively curative: they are just made of keratin (like our nails and hairs).

Learn more here:

https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/pangolin

https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/12764/45222544

Learn here about pangolins traffic:

https://news.mongabay.com/2014/05/chinese-officials-seize-nearly-a-thousand-dead-pangolins/

#Pangolin #cutepangolin #pangolinillustration #extictforever #foreverextinct #foreverextinctillustrations

Forever Extinct #6 – White-headed duck (Oxyura leucocephala)

As I was doing my researches to find new endangered species for my illustration series, I came across to this beautiful duck: I’ve never seen it before! The colour of the beak is the thing that most amazed me, and also how that light blue is in wonderful balance with the tone of their plumage. Nature is definitely incredible and she has a perfect taste for art.

Those beauties (Oxyura leucocephala) are endangered and they belonged to the IUCN red list since 2000, and although there are some conservations sites and in-place research and monitoring programme, their number is constantly decreasing, and now the number of mature individuals is between 5,300 and 8,700.

They are native to the Palearctic, and they can also be found in the Ethiopia region. The largest population is found in Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Mongolia. Central and East-Asian populations tend to be migratory while populations in Spain and North Africa are non-migratory.

White-headed ducks are diving ducks and are reluctant to fly in general: they prefer shallow margins of lakes in which they can dive repeatedly. They remain submerged for 5 to 7 seconds and dive again within seconds of surfacing.

The most serious threat for the White-headed Duck is the destruction of its natural habitats – nesting, resting and wintering sites.

The illustrations depicts their general alert position, the one they assume when they are in danger to be predated, with a head-up tale.

Learn more about them:

https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22679814/119403602

https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Oxyura_leucocephala/

http://bspb.org/en/threatened-species/white-headed-duck.html

#illustrations #illustrationserie #endangeredspecies #endangeredanimals #foreverextinct #foreverextinctillustrations

Forever Extinct #5 - African Black Rhino (Dicero bicornis).

The African Black Rhino’s story can gives us some hope, not too much though.

This beauty with a skin texture that makes me think of a living stone has been hunted almost to extinction for their horn: 96% of Black Rhinos were lost due to poaching between 1970 and 1992, because of relentless hunters from European settlers. Poachers kill them because their horns are highly prized on the black market (today their price is something like 100.000 US dollar per kilo) and used also in traditional Chinese medicine.

Black Rhino has a very poor eyesight – they cannot see more than 30 meters away, but instead has a great sense of smell, plus they can run quite fast, if considering their size - 1,5 meter per 1,4 tonnes: they can run 55 km/h, and they can also change direction quickly and surprisingly disappear in the bush. Their bigger horn is 50 cm long, they have a prehensile upper lip (and this is the actual peculiarity that is differentiating them from the white rhinos, since they all are same colour), which they use to feed on twigs of woody plants and on other kind of plants. Plus, apparently they love acacia.

Because of effective conservation efforts, the total number of black rhino increased again from less than 2,500 animals to 5,000, but still it remains a critically endangered species, and anyway three subspecies of black rhino are forever gone: they are the Southern-Central Balck Rino (D. b. minor), the Southern-Western Black Rhino (D. b. occidentalis) and the East African Black Rhino (D. b. michaelis).

They all rest in peace.

More info here:

https://onekindplanet.org/animal/western-black-rhino/

here and here.

#african black rhino #endangered species #extinct animals #forever extinct #illustrations #illustrations project #art on tumblr

Forever Extinct #4 Marsican Brown Bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus), endangered specie with less than fifty animals left.

The endangered specie of today is the Marsican Brown Bear, an endemic bear that lives in central regions of Italy, in the National park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise.

Their number has been decreasing because of illegal hunting and also because of a not proper management of their territory.

Due the few exemplars left alive, also, many concerns regard the state of health of those animals: since the genetic variability has been reduced, those bears are more and more vulnerable to some kind of illnesses.

“Poaching and poor management of the land are real emergencies for the protection of this species - underlines the WWF - and the last and only population in the world of Marsican brown bear, a very important piece of our heritage, is now at serious risk of extinction.”

More info here and here (Italian):

#illustrations #artontumblr #endangeredanimal #illustrationsproject #illustrationsserie #animalillustrations #forever extinct #extinction #extinctionisforever

Forever Extinct #3 - Ring-Tailed Lemur

This s a Ring Tailed Lemur (Lemur catta), an extremely elegant primate originally from Madagascar: they live in south and southwestern Madagascar, and a small additional population lives near the mountains of Andringitra on the southeastern plateau.

This species is now endangered, and since the year 2000 there has been crash of 95% of population: it has been estimated that we have left something between 2000 and 2400 exemplars of them, and most of them (over 1000) live now in 140 zoos around the world, while the Duke Lemur Centre houses 35 animals.

Factors driving the decline of lemur’s population include rapid habitat loss, hunting, and the illegal pet trade.

#illustrations #illustrations project #forever extinct #ring tailed lemur #endangered animals #animalist illustrations

Forever Extinct #2

The animal of today is not extinct yet, but it could become it soon.

This is the Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula artica), a Nordic bird, whom 60 per cent population lives in Iceland.

Those birds are very well known in Iceland, where they became almost the symbol of the country for tourists. Unfortunately people are also hunting them (no words for this). They can change their colour according to the season, and since they are seabirds, they spend long months out in the sea during winter. They are monogamous with their partner and they can live quite a long life, averagely between 20 and 25 years old, although the oldest puffin that has been documented died at age of 38 years. They have also incredible skills: they can dive to depths of about 60 meters and fly at a speed of 88 km/h (24m/sec) by flapping their wings 400 times per minute (they need to because they are quite heavy birds).

Unfortunately, according to World Birds Report, in 2018 this beautiful, majestic almost fantastic animal has been declared endangered, together with so many other well know bird species. According to this report:

“40 percent of the world’s 11,000 bird species are in decline, and one in eight bird species is threatened with global extinction. The data are unequivocal. We are undergoing a steady and continuing deterioration in the status of the world’s birds,” said Tris Allinson, BirdLife’s Senior Global Science Officer, and Editor-In-Chief of the report. “The threats driving the avian extinction crisis are many and varied, but invariably of humanity’s making.”

Let’s do something before it is too late!

More info about Atlantic puffin:

https://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/even-familiar-birds-risk-extinction-new-study-finds

https://adventures.is/blog/puffins-in-iceland/