Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb, and in today's episode, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be chatting with Tom Lathan, author of the new
Speaker 2: book Lost Wonders Ten Tales of Extinction from the twenty
Speaker 2: first Century. It's out June tenth. Without further ado, let's
Speaker 2: jump right into the interview. Hi Tom, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hi that Rov, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2: The new book is Lost Wonders, Ten Tales of Extinction
Speaker 2: from the twenty first Century, publishing June tenth here in
Speaker 2: the States, came out earlier, what in November in the UK? Right,
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: It tackles the sixth mass extinction event that we're all
Speaker 2: living in by chronicling ten different recently extinct species. You know,
Speaker 2: we've all read or heard about the I'm going Holo
Speaker 2: scene extinction. But do you find that people have a
Speaker 2: difficult time truly grasping what's happening or the scale of
Speaker 2: what's happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it is a difficult thing to grasp,
Speaker 3: you know, even for people who are following this and
Speaker 3: who care about this. It is kind of crazy, and
Speaker 3: I think, you know, mainly because of the timescale that
Speaker 3: it's happening on the reason why I really wanted to
Speaker 3: write this book, which is actually eleven species. It's ten stories,
Speaker 3: but eleven species. Two of those species, their story is
Speaker 3: so so similar, so intertwined. The two birds are mistaken
Speaker 3: for one another. Even so, it made sense to tell
Speaker 3: those in one story, as it were in one chapter.
Speaker 3: But really the thing that unites the entire book is
Speaker 3: that these are species that have gone extinct in the
Speaker 3: twenty first century. The reason why I wanted to write
Speaker 3: about those species in particular, it's because I really wanted
Speaker 3: to get into the idea that extinction is unfolding all
Speaker 3: around us, and that when we tip think of extinction,
Speaker 3: it can be this this far flung thing from the past.
Speaker 3: You know, virtually everyone's first encounter with the word will
Speaker 3: be in the context of dinosaurs. You know, I was
Speaker 3: a dinosaur kid. I was obsessed the Jurassic Park. That was, yeah,
Speaker 3: we look like we're probably the similar age. So you
Speaker 3: probably had your Jurassic Park phase, but absolutely either that
Speaker 3: or the Dodo, and these are these are things from
Speaker 3: the distant past, and I think that we all make
Speaker 3: an unconscious association there with the word extinction and the past,
Speaker 3: but it's it's obviously it's unfolding all around us. And
Speaker 3: I actually came to the book, came to the idea
Speaker 3: of writing the book when I learned that one of
Speaker 3: these species, the Christmas eln in Pipastrell, had actually gone
Speaker 3: extinct on my twenty third birthday. And when I learned
Speaker 3: that fact, and I realized that I could remember, you know,
Speaker 3: what I'd been doing that day, I could remember who
Speaker 3: I'd been with, you know, I, well, most of most
Speaker 3: probably can't really remember the evening, but I remember a
Speaker 3: lot of the day. I could look back through emails
Speaker 3: and texts, social media and really kind of get a
Speaker 3: picture of what my world was like on the day
Speaker 3: that as species went extinct. It was just a kind
Speaker 3: of mind blowing realization, and it kind of got me
Speaker 3: thinking about what else had gone extinct, you know, within
Speaker 3: my lifetime, within the lifetimes of most people who read
Speaker 3: the book. So that's what really kind of drove me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're kind of making something that's kind of
Speaker 2: invisible to many visible and real in a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think it's understandable that you know,
Speaker 3: we don't necessarily as a species, we don't really necessarily
Speaker 3: think about extinction that much, I would say, and it
Speaker 3: can be quite a dour subject, and there's very often
Speaker 3: you know, we are anthropercentric. We're obsessed with our own
Speaker 3: stories and our own our own species. So you know,
Speaker 3: an obscure back going extinct or a tiny snail going
Speaker 3: extinct somewhere in the world isn't necessarily going to kind
Speaker 3: of grab everyone's attention. I think it's really important that
Speaker 3: we know what's going on, and you know, it probably
Speaker 3: won't surprise anyone to hear that in all of these stories,
Speaker 3: we're the cause, either in the here and now or
Speaker 3: we set off the chain of events that have led
Speaker 3: to these extinctions.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't want to give potential readers the wrong idea, though,
Speaker 2: because each chapter of your of your book is I
Speaker 2: guess in a very real sense of tragedy, but there
Speaker 2: that each chapter is also about like the wonders and
Speaker 2: improbabilities surrounding these various species. So I definitely want to
Speaker 2: get into some questions about those wonders and improbabilities as
Speaker 2: we look at maybe a few examples. But how did
Speaker 2: you how did you end up finalizing a list for
Speaker 2: the book? Where did you? I mean, obviously have you
Speaker 2: had the one in mind that corresponded with your your
Speaker 2: twenty third birthday, But how about the rest of them?
Speaker 2: How this come together?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, really, when I started the project, or actually
Speaker 3: before I go into that, I think, Carle, echo what
Speaker 3: you said. I think you're right. You know, extinction. I
Speaker 3: think sometimes it's one of those issues that people might
Speaker 3: not want to think about, because, you know, it just God,
Speaker 3: it's just terrible, isn't it something going extinct, especially something
Speaker 3: that's millions of years old. It's kind of mind boggling.
Speaker 3: But one thing, and actually when I when I went
Speaker 3: into writing the book, it was it was a doubt
Speaker 3: I had, like, God, is this is anyone going to
Speaker 3: want to read this? This is just going to be
Speaker 3: so depressing. But as I actually got into the research,
Speaker 3: and a big part of that research was actually talking
Speaker 3: to the people who were there on the ground. In
Speaker 3: some cases they may they discovered these species. In other
Speaker 3: cases they'd taken care of the last individual of a
Speaker 3: species and kind of dealt with the aftermath of extinction.
Speaker 3: I actually really found a lot of grounds for hope
Speaker 3: in that because it's really inspiring the lengths that people
Speaker 3: go to in conservation. It's a field that is absolutely
Speaker 3: jam packed with unsung heroes, people that go above and
Speaker 3: beyond the call of duty every single day, who have
Speaker 3: their who have their job, and there are just little
Speaker 3: things that they do just completely off their own initiative,
Speaker 3: just because they know they can make a difference. And
Speaker 3: there are even stories of species being saved by people
Speaker 3: who who aren't scientists, who are hobbyists. There's an example
Speaker 3: in the book of a species of pupfish, which is
Speaker 3: a tiny little fish from the American West, and also
Speaker 3: also in Mexico. There are species spread across the arid areas.
Speaker 3: And one particular one of the people that I spoke
Speaker 3: to was actually a bus driver from New Jersey who
Speaker 3: is a hobbyist. He just loves fish, you know, since
Speaker 3: he was a kid, and he's actually become involved in
Speaker 3: the efforts to save endangered species. He's when I spoke
Speaker 3: to him, he had a critically endangered species just behind
Speaker 3: him in his fish tank, and it's you know, obviously
Speaker 3: there's there's no financial incentive for him, and I just
Speaker 3: think that the more that you learn about these stories Yes,
Speaker 3: the subjects of this book have gone extinct, but the
Speaker 3: people who tried to save them have had other successes.
Speaker 3: They've used the knowledge that they gained from trying to
Speaker 3: save these species, which very often is uncharted territory. Some
Speaker 3: of these extinctions happened because the scientists simply didn't know
Speaker 3: how do we help this species. But from these experiences,
Speaker 3: they've learned what they need to do to save other species,
Speaker 3: and they've had success. And I just find that really inspiring.
Speaker 3: But sorry to go on to your question. Could you
Speaker 3: remind me again of what you are?
Speaker 2: Oh? I asked just how you ended up coming up
Speaker 2: with a list?
Speaker 3: Yes, So, I as a journalist. I've been writing about
Speaker 3: nature for a few years and it came out of
Speaker 3: quite an organic conversation with my partner, who's also a writer,
Speaker 3: and I just had this thought. I just wondered, you know,
Speaker 3: what's I wonder what's gone extinct? You know, in the
Speaker 3: last you know, in my lifetime essentially. So I contacted
Speaker 3: the ice UCN, which is the International Union for the
Speaker 3: Conservation of Nature, which is the global body that essentially
Speaker 3: oversees the conservation status of everything. So they're the they're
Speaker 3: the people essentially who give the final word and whether
Speaker 3: something is endangered, critically endangered, extinct, extinct in the world,
Speaker 3: and so on, And I just I just asked them,
Speaker 3: you know, for a list of recent extinctions, and they
Speaker 3: sent me back this enormous, sprawling spreadsheet full of hundreds.
Speaker 3: I think it was up with the five hundred extinctions.
Speaker 3: But thankfully that that spreadsheet included a by date of
Speaker 3: extinction column, so I filtered by that, and these eleven
Speaker 3: species are what kind of came out of that, and
Speaker 3: I really kind of really that's when it really kind
Speaker 3: of struck me. In fact, that's the moment where I
Speaker 3: saw the the extinction date of the pipistre being my
Speaker 3: birthday and made that connection and had that realization.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to I'm want to ask about one
Speaker 2: that I have to acknowledge that on the surface, this
Speaker 2: one might not seem that exciting. And when I was
Speaker 2: reading your book, that was my initial response. I was
Speaker 2: kind of like, well this, I don't know how enthralled
Speaker 2: I'm going to be by this one. But it ended
Speaker 2: up being I think my one of my favorite chapters,
Speaker 2: and this is the chapter dealing with the Saint Helena
Speaker 2: Olive can you tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 2: island of Saint Helena and the Saint Helena Olive. I
Speaker 2: was not I was vaguely familiar with the island from
Speaker 2: its prominence in history, but I was not familiar with
Speaker 2: this organism at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is also one of my favorites. Before I
Speaker 3: go into that, I think it's interesting. I was thinking
Speaker 3: about this this morning. Actually, I think we're all kind
Speaker 3: of conditioned to see wildlife in a certain way. You know,
Speaker 3: if I don't know if you guys have I'm presuming
Speaker 3: you guys have David Attenborough documentaries. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: National Hero, so that you know. I was raised on
Speaker 3: his documentaries, and I think, as wonderful as they are,
Speaker 3: they do condition you see the natural world in a
Speaker 3: certain way. The focus is very much on charismatic species
Speaker 3: or species that have some kind of quirk or fascinating behavior,
Speaker 3: and I think that we tend to kind of unconsciously
Speaker 3: and buy a sort of value system by which we
Speaker 3: judge species on that basis. But actually, what I found
Speaker 3: one of the really exciting things about writing a book
Speaker 3: like this is that you know the decision of what
Speaker 3: goes in this book It wasn't like I just picked
Speaker 3: eleven species that fascinated me. It was decided for me.
Speaker 3: And what that meant was I had to really kind
Speaker 3: of approach species that, like you, I wouldn't necessarily think, Oh,
Speaker 3: is this tree going to be interesting? Is this snail
Speaker 3: going to kind of interest me personally? And I had
Speaker 3: to find other ways of looking at them and find
Speaker 3: the fascination and wonder in these species and that tree.
Speaker 3: The Saint Lena olive is a particularly fascinating species because
Speaker 3: it lived only on a single island in the middle
Speaker 3: of the South Atlantic Ocean. And this island, Saint Helena,
Speaker 3: is extraordinarily. It's nearly two thousand kilometers west of Africa,
Speaker 3: slap bang in the middle of the South Atlantic and
Speaker 3: when the it's so remote that when the International Space
Speaker 3: Station is circling overhead, the astronauts on board are actually
Speaker 3: the closest neighbors to the residents on Saint Helena.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: And remote islands are a very exciting place for biologists
Speaker 3: because due to their isolation, species that end up making
Speaker 3: it to those islands end up evolving in fascinating ways,
Speaker 3: and you end up with these extraordinary ecosystems, and Saint
Speaker 3: Nna is one of those examples. You know, there are
Speaker 3: a few species that are capable of making that leap,
Speaker 3: you know, crossing thousands of miles of ocean to reach
Speaker 3: this tiny island, volcanic island. And what you end up
Speaker 3: with in a place like that are things like trees
Speaker 3: that have evolved from daisies, you end up with with
Speaker 3: with earwigs, you end up with fluorescent wood lice, a
Speaker 3: real bizarre kind of hodgepodge. There was a biologist that
Speaker 3: I spoke to about the ecosystem who said he described
Speaker 3: it as imagine if you just gave evolution another chance,
Speaker 3: you just reset evolution on an island and allowed it
Speaker 3: to kind of take a different course. This is the
Speaker 3: kind of thing you would end up with, just this
Speaker 3: kind of alien ecosystem. So, the Saint Lena olive is
Speaker 3: a species of hardwood tree, and this family of tree species,
Speaker 3: they all originate in Southern Africa, and they've made these
Speaker 3: extraordinary journeys and radiated out Southern Africa and ended up
Speaker 3: in islands in the Indian Ocean. And one of the
Speaker 3: places they ended up was on Saint Helena, and it
Speaker 3: was a mystery that really confounded scientists, because to get
Speaker 3: to somewhere like Saint Helena, if you're a tree, your
Speaker 3: seeds need to have a way to navigate thousands of
Speaker 3: miles of ocean, and there are potential ways they could
Speaker 3: do that. They might some seed pods can float, so
Speaker 3: they would float there. The Saint Helena olive seed pods
Speaker 3: didn't float. In fact, they were sterilized by saltwater and
Speaker 3: other ways seas might be carried by the wind. They
Speaker 3: wouldn't do that. They were quite large capsules. And the
Speaker 3: other way that seeds can disperse is by growing a
Speaker 3: fruit and being eaten by birds, same thing that olive
Speaker 3: couldn't do any of those things. So the biologists, some
Speaker 3: of whom I spoke to you for the book, they
Speaker 3: eventually deduced that the way this species had to have
Speaker 3: ended up on this remote island was by a bizarre
Speaker 3: chain of coincidences, wherein an albatross or a similar seafaring
Speaker 3: bird must have landed somewhere in southern Africa and picked
Speaker 3: up a seed in its feathers or maybe in some
Speaker 3: mud coating its foot, and then that albatross would have
Speaker 3: ranged out over the ocean and eventually ended up at
Speaker 3: Saint Helena, and just by chance, this seed had dropped
Speaker 3: dropped from the feathers of this albatross, found its way
Speaker 3: into the soil and the story of that species on
Speaker 3: the island began, which is extraordinary. It's twelve million years old,
Speaker 3: and it's so genetically unique that a genus had to
Speaker 3: be created for the species. So the genus is the
Speaker 3: classification that sits above species. And when you look away
Speaker 3: from the charismatic species and species that are more often
Speaker 3: kind of celebrated and featured in nature documentaries, you have
Speaker 3: to kind of look at species in a different way,
Speaker 3: and I think you find incredible stories when you start
Speaker 3: to look at the natural world in a different way
Speaker 3: and you can find that they're everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a I just love this idea that it's
Speaker 2: almost like this plant was not supposed to be there.
Speaker 2: It's just such an incredible string of events that we
Speaker 2: can kind of speculate on that that landed it there.
Speaker 2: And I love the quote that you share about how
Speaker 2: rare events happen over geological time. So, yeah, it's unlikely,
Speaker 2: but given enough time, things like this do occur. In
Speaker 2: this is the result.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, what are the chances. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: it's already just a seed being swept up in the
Speaker 3: feathers of an albatross is already you know, it seems
Speaker 3: quite an unlikely scenario. But then for it to have
Speaker 3: dropped out just at the right place, it's kind of insane.
Speaker 3: And that quote that you just mentioned, that was Mike Fay,
Speaker 3: who was a geneticist from Q Gardens in the UK,
Speaker 3: and Q Gardens did a lot of work to try
Speaker 3: and conserve this species. He is, he was, he was
Speaker 3: actually he led the attempt to propagate the species in
Speaker 3: the end. But yeah, that was an incredible insight from him,
Speaker 3: you know, he said, he said to me that, you know,
Speaker 3: there were twelve million years for this to happen, and
Speaker 3: it only had to happen once.
Speaker 2: But of course another organism eventually came to the island,
Speaker 2: and that would be us. This one was sheltered for
Speaker 2: quite a while, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's one of the it's a double
Speaker 3: edged sword. You know, Isolation creates a fascinating breeding ground
Speaker 3: for evolution, for interesting species to evolve and adapt. But
Speaker 3: by the same token, when you have a species like
Speaker 3: humans in the book I talk about how Saint Helena
Speaker 3: was almost like a castle. It was fortified against the
Speaker 3: outside world. You know, there were so few organisms who
Speaker 3: could actually make that trip that the sea kind of
Speaker 3: acted almost as a moat. And the arrival of humans
Speaker 3: in fifteen oh six was essentially like lowering the drawbridge.
Speaker 3: Enabled things like goats, cats, all kinds of invasive species
Speaker 3: of plant. Rats are obviously a huge problem pretty much
Speaker 3: everywhere they're introduced, and that's what happened on Saint Helena,
Speaker 3: and it was an island that in history are it
Speaker 3: was discovered, it was compared by many to Eden. It
Speaker 3: was this verdant spot in the middle of the ocean
Speaker 3: that was really kind of life sustaining for sailors who
Speaker 3: at that point in time had to journey all the
Speaker 3: way around Africa, around the bottom of Africa in order
Speaker 3: to access Asia and India. So it was a really
Speaker 3: big problem, you know, fighting off things like scurvy, restocking
Speaker 3: with water, and Saint Helena was just this kind of
Speaker 3: oasis in the middle of the ocean. But you know,
Speaker 3: a few years later it was decimated.
Speaker 2: In what led did this decimation, So, I mean.
Speaker 3: One thing was the introduction of invasive species. Another thing
Speaker 3: was habitat destruction. So once the island was settled by
Speaker 3: the English East India Company, homes had to be built.
Speaker 3: Enslaved people were brought to the island in order to
Speaker 3: create some kind of economic purpose for the island. That's
Speaker 3: how it was viewed as the English East India comp
Speaker 3: at the time described places like Saint Helina as factories.
Speaker 3: That was their ambition for this place. So everything there
Speaker 3: was a resource in order to pursue that aim, and
Speaker 3: so massive deforestation things like goats were a particular problem,
Speaker 3: eating native vegetation, and once you lose that vegetation, you
Speaker 3: then get soil erosion, and there are these crazy reports
Speaker 3: of the soil erosion being so bad that the sea
Speaker 3: turned black around the island. And once you get into
Speaker 3: that state, there's very few things that then can then
Speaker 3: kind of grow back and get a foothold in the
Speaker 3: soil which has essentially been completely transformed. And in Saint Helena,
Speaker 3: all of these threats kind of conspired and the landscape
Speaker 3: was transformed and native species shrank further and further back
Speaker 3: to the center of the island, which is where the
Speaker 3: last Saint Helena olive was found in the nineteen seventies and.
Speaker 2: You read about that. Now we just an empty pot, right,
Speaker 2: it's labeled as Saint Helena.
Speaker 3: Yes, So in Q Garden's Temperate House, which is this fantastic, incredible,
Speaker 3: decadent Victorian glasshouse in London and Q there is you know,
Speaker 3: species from all over the world there, and then in
Speaker 3: one corner there's just this empty terracotta pot, which is
Speaker 3: an extraordinary kind of symbol of what could have been.
Speaker 2: Now, you mentioned goats and the destructive powers of goats
Speaker 2: when they're introduced to places like this, they factor into
Speaker 2: at least one of the other extinction stories that you share,
Speaker 2: and that is the Pinta Island tortoise of the Galapagos Islands.
Speaker 2: This is another far flong island dwelling species, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so a lot of these species were island
Speaker 3: dwelling species. For the reasons we discussed the Pinter Island tortoise.
Speaker 3: It's yeah. The goats that came to Pinter Island were
Speaker 3: introduced by fishermen and there were three of them deposited
Speaker 3: in the nineteen fifties and that population swelled to two thousands.
Speaker 3: In fact, you know, I actually don't off the top
Speaker 3: of my head. I can't remember the exact number, but basically,
Speaker 3: you know, the goats were far more efficient. If you
Speaker 3: imagine a tortoise versus a goat in terms of grazing
Speaker 3: and things like that, the torses really were no match.
Speaker 3: You know. The Galapagos, because of its isolation, is a
Speaker 3: place that you know, there were never things like goats there.
Speaker 3: There were never those kind of specially adapted herbivores. And
Speaker 3: it's a problem not just for tortoises, but also the
Speaker 3: vegetation that tortoises feed on, because if you don't have herbivores,
Speaker 3: plants don't learn to adapt to repel herbivores. So things
Speaker 3: like thorns, certain kinds of chemical compounds, that all kinds
Speaker 3: of adaptation that might make native vegetation resilient to goat.
Speaker 3: It just it doesn't have that vegetation doesn't have time
Speaker 3: to adapt when you suddenly release something like a goat
Speaker 3: on the island.
Speaker 2: Now, with the Galapagos tortoises in general, I feel like
Speaker 2: these are some amazing creatures that we can They are
Speaker 2: often featured in documentaries, the sort of Attenborough documentaries that
Speaker 2: we've been discussing in the sort of documentaries that very
Speaker 2: much were inspired by that kind of content, which is great,
Speaker 2: but we can almost kind of grow numb to them.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've found this to be the
Speaker 2: case as well. Like we see the Galapagos tortoises, maybe
Speaker 2: if we're lucky we get to see one in the zoo,
Speaker 2: or if not, a Galapago's tortoise and maybe an aldabra
Speaker 2: tortoise that is in some way similar. But when you
Speaker 2: really observe them like they are just so fabulously weird
Speaker 2: and wonderful, right they are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's key. I mean, I think appreciating
Speaker 3: nature is it's always about looking a little closer because
Speaker 3: I think think you're right with something like a giant tortoise.
Speaker 3: You know, we've we've seen that, We've all seen that
Speaker 3: many times. We kind of I think we think we
Speaker 3: always think we understand the things we've seen many times,
Speaker 3: so you know, our brain knows how to categorize that
Speaker 3: so we can kind of just move on. But you know,
Speaker 3: like any species, they are really fascinating there. In the
Speaker 3: case of the giant tortises of Glapagos, I mean, what
Speaker 3: fascinated me the most was how they got there, you know,
Speaker 3: which similar to the same thing, not olive. It is another
Speaker 3: incredible dispersal story. So something like a tortoise, something that
Speaker 3: large and cumbersome and slow traversing an ocean, is just
Speaker 3: as unbelievable as a you know, tiny seed. What they've
Speaker 3: discovered is that the tortoises or their ancestors must have
Speaker 3: been washed out to see from South America, which is
Speaker 3: where their most recent ancestor lived, and the tortoises would
Speaker 3: have had to have survived for god knows how long,
Speaker 3: just on the ocean with no food. And when this
Speaker 3: theory was first kind of discussed in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 3: it was actually put to the test. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: researchers would would take capture giant tortoises, take them into
Speaker 3: the ocean, and just drop them into the sea. And
Speaker 3: what they would see is that the tortoises were quite
Speaker 3: good at swimming, They could float quite easily, they could
Speaker 3: keep their heads above water, and gradually, through genetic analysis,
Speaker 3: scientists were able to map how the dispersal had taken place,
Speaker 3: first from South America to one Galapagos island and then
Speaker 3: later to another. So there's just this when you kind
Speaker 3: of accelerate time and think of it like a time lapse.
Speaker 3: There's just this series of odyssees going from island to
Speaker 3: island from the continent, and these tortoises arriving on new islands,
Speaker 3: establishing species, growing slightly differently into the different species of
Speaker 3: Galapagos trying torsis. It's incredible, but it's it's it's kind
Speaker 3: of a less obvious thing. I think it's easy to
Speaker 3: just be distracted by the size of these creatures and
Speaker 3: for that to be what we associate with them. But
Speaker 3: then when you learn about their journeys, it's really it's
Speaker 3: fascinating on a different level.
Speaker 2: Now, the story of the Pinta Island Glabgirl's tortoise is
Speaker 2: also interesting in that it is also a story of rediscovery.
Speaker 2: Could you tell us a little bit about this Some
Speaker 2: folks may have probably heard parts of this tale before.
Speaker 2: Tell us about Lonesome George.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in nineteen seventy two, well, loans from George.
Speaker 3: A lot of people will be familiar with that name because,
Speaker 3: you know, he was he was a celebrity animal. You know,
Speaker 3: he was he was world famous. He had hundreds of
Speaker 3: thousands of people, you know, coming to the Galapagos visiting
Speaker 3: him in his enclosure. His species, the Pinter tortoise, which
Speaker 3: is the species I write about in Lost Wonders, was
Speaker 3: believed to be extinct from the beginning of the twentieth centuries.
Speaker 3: I think it was nineteen oh six the California Academy
Speaker 3: of Sciences went to Pinter Island and collected what was
Speaker 3: ended up being the last known female of the species,
Speaker 3: and so for seventy odd years, you know, that was
Speaker 3: thought to be the end of that species, until one
Speaker 3: day a Hungarian American malacologist and his wife were on holiday.
Speaker 3: They were on Pinter Island looking at snails, and suddenly
Speaker 3: they looked up and saw this giant tortoise. And they
Speaker 3: didn't know what they'd seen at the time, but later
Speaker 3: when they spoke two other people who were working in
Speaker 3: the archipelago, it soon became clear that this was the
Speaker 3: Pinter Island tortoise. You know, this is a species that
Speaker 3: everyone had thought disappeared, and that ended up that precipitated
Speaker 3: a search, and eventually they found and captured George and
Speaker 3: took him to a captive breeding center, hoping that they
Speaker 3: would be able to save this species by finding a female,
Speaker 3: and he ended up staying there for four decades and
Speaker 3: eventually died in twenty twelve. After many many searches, there
Speaker 3: were no females found. Attempts to have him mate with
Speaker 3: females of closely related species but to no avail. But
Speaker 3: the fascinating thing about this story, I mean, there's so
Speaker 3: many twists and turns, but the biologists. I spoke to
Speaker 3: one of the biologists I spoke to for this about
Speaker 3: this species, James Gibbs, he told me this fascinating story
Speaker 3: that he and some of his colleagues at the Galapagos Conservancy.
Speaker 3: They a few years ago they went on a trip
Speaker 3: to a remote island and they discovered that there were
Speaker 3: hundreds of Galapagos trying torses of different species living on
Speaker 3: the side of this volcano on this incredibly remote island.
Speaker 3: And eventually they kind of worked out why this had happened.
Speaker 3: And their theory is that whalers who used to use
Speaker 3: the Galapagos Islands as basically a meat lader. So whalers
Speaker 3: out in the Pacific they would come to the Galapagos
Speaker 3: capture tortoises because you know, they were a good food source.
Speaker 3: You could keep alive on a boat for weeks, and
Speaker 3: there were a big part for the decimation of those species.
Speaker 3: But it's thought that they used to gather at this
Speaker 3: spot on the side of this remote island, and at
Speaker 3: some point they must have thrown over overboard some tortoises,
Speaker 3: or they may have escaped, but you ended up with
Speaker 3: this isolated population of these different species, and somewhere in
Speaker 3: there must have been Pinterer Island tortoises, or at least one,
Speaker 3: because James Gibbs and his colleagues found a few years
Speaker 3: ago a hybrid tortoise whose mother or father must have
Speaker 3: been a Pinter Island tortoise, which is a fascinating prospect.
Speaker 3: They haven't found the parent, but it suggests that that
Speaker 3: there is or re simply was, you know, a living
Speaker 3: Pinter Island tortoise. So this is after George's death, after
Speaker 3: the species had yet again been decloit extinct, and it's
Speaker 3: still a possibility. So that's a really interesting, interesting story,
Speaker 3: and you know, there is some small hope there. That
Speaker 3: same expedition did find another tortoise that was actually an
Speaker 3: individual from a species that was also believed extinct, so
Speaker 3: they reversed another giant tortoise extinction.
Speaker 2: There now, how rare are rediscoveries of previously believed extinct species.
Speaker 3: I can't give you any figures off the top of
Speaker 3: my head, but it happens more often than you think,
Speaker 3: you know there are known kind of it depends on
Speaker 3: the species. I mean, some species are fairly easy to monitor.
Speaker 3: Other species, you know, maybe due to their size, due
Speaker 3: to where they live, are you know, close to impossible.
Speaker 3: It really does depend But I think sometimes you know
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why, there's a little bit of
Speaker 3: a disconnect between what biologists will say about the species
Speaker 3: they study in terms of their conservation status and what
Speaker 3: the IUCN will say. So sometimes scientists will come out
Speaker 3: and say, this species, we believe it's extinct, We've done
Speaker 3: this extensive search for it, and we can't find it.
Speaker 3: No one's seen it for a decade. But the IUCN
Speaker 3: will kind of hold fire because there is always that
Speaker 3: possibility that someone will find a remote population or that
Speaker 3: this species is especially discrete. So there's very often a
Speaker 3: kind of like that, a lagging effect where species aren't
Speaker 3: actually declared extinct until we can kind of know with certitude.
Speaker 3: But it does happen. Yeah, species are rediscovered.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm not going to ask you about every organism
Speaker 2: that you govern in the book, obviously, but that I
Speaker 2: do want to ask you about one more location and
Speaker 2: associated organisms, and that would be the two organisms that
Speaker 2: you profile from Christmas Eyeland. This is a place that
Speaker 2: I think some of our listeners definitely remember from either
Speaker 2: episodes they might have listened to or shows they might
Speaker 2: have watched about the Christmas Island crabs. But your selecting
Speaker 2: ser of course night crabs remind us a bit about
Speaker 2: Christmas Island and what makes its ecosystem so special.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Christmas Island is another one of those isolated
Speaker 3: islands on which endemic species just really thrive. But it
Speaker 3: isn't geographically strictly geographically isolated so much as the ocean
Speaker 3: that surrounds it is incredibly deep, so in some places
Speaker 3: it's five kilometers deep. You can fit Mount Kilimanjaro in there.
Speaker 3: It's also surrounded by strong ocean currents, and the place
Speaker 3: where it sits in the world is quite fascinating. It's
Speaker 3: it sits on what's called the Wallace line, which is
Speaker 3: the border between two biogeographical realms and a biogary graphical
Speaker 3: realm is basically it's the border between two places where
Speaker 3: radically different species and organisms will live. So the Wallace
Speaker 3: Line separates to its west you've got Southeast Asia, You've
Speaker 3: got things like monkeys, all sorts of species that live there.
Speaker 3: And to its east you've got Australia and you've got
Speaker 3: you know, the incredible mussupials and things like that. And
Speaker 3: it's separated by this invisible divide, invisible to us anyway.
Speaker 3: And so Christmas Island is a hodgepodge of those two
Speaker 3: biogeographical realms. And the two species that I wrote about
Speaker 3: in Lost Wonders from Christmas Island they're an example of
Speaker 3: that because one of them is from the east of
Speaker 3: the line and one of them is from the west.
Speaker 3: But Christmas Island itself, another reason why it's such a
Speaker 3: fascinating place is that it wasn't settled for a long time.
Speaker 3: You know, it's quite unique. It was sighted, it was
Speaker 3: cited on maps, it was cited by navigators, but no
Speaker 3: one really thought there was much point in taking ownership
Speaker 3: of Christmas Island. It was a rock covered in rainforest
Speaker 3: in the Indian Ocean. It was surrounded by impenetrable cliffs,
Speaker 3: very few places to land, so no one really bothered
Speaker 3: until the end of the nineteenth century when phosphorus was discovered, sorry,
Speaker 3: phosphatic rock was discovered on the ocean floor, and it
Speaker 3: was determined that Christmas Island would be a source of
Speaker 3: phosphatic rock used to make fertilizer, which was obviously a
Speaker 3: huge economic incentive to settle there and colonize it, which
Speaker 3: is what happened. And as usual, that brought with it
Speaker 3: a raft of invasive species habitat destruction, which really kind
Speaker 3: of had the effect you would expect. The two species
Speaker 3: that I write about, one of which is the one
Speaker 3: of which is the prune sized bat, the Christmas Island
Speaker 3: pipistrell that went extinct on my birthday. That was, by
Speaker 3: all accounts, are very cute little organism. It had a
Speaker 3: tiny quiff, It was the size of a prune, so
Speaker 3: it could fit comfortably in your hand. And the forest
Speaker 3: skink was a metallic brown skink that was extremely common.
Speaker 3: Both these species were extremely common. You know, researchers described,
Speaker 3: you know, seeing as many as eighty if the forest
Speaker 3: skink basking in the sun on a single log, so
Speaker 3: it really was everywhere, and the pipistrell similarly, I think
Speaker 3: the first the first population count estimated between five and
Speaker 3: ten thousand on quite a small island, and it was
Speaker 3: so common that you would islanders would find them fluttering
Speaker 3: around inside their homes, you know, hunting insects. There were
Speaker 3: accounts of them tumbling into people's people's dinner, you know,
Speaker 3: beating soup and suddenly a back crush lands in your
Speaker 3: suit bowl. So they really were everywhere, and then in
Speaker 3: the late eighties suddenly people noticed that they were starting
Speaker 3: to disappear. And essentially what happened is these species disappeared
Speaker 3: in the east to west patterns, so from the east
Speaker 3: of the islands of the west, they gradually faded out.
Speaker 3: And at the same time it was it was realized
Speaker 3: that a particularly dangerous and invasive species of snake, the
Speaker 3: wolf snake, had been introduced, which is believed to be
Speaker 3: the primary cause of both extinctions by the majority of scientists.
Speaker 3: There were other things like giants, centerpedes, cats, rats, yellow
Speaker 3: crazy ants, which are another you know, they're their own
Speaker 3: fascinating phenomenon, but really it's the introduction of the wolf snake,
Speaker 3: and you see this correlations fascinating correlation with the retreat
Speaker 3: of these two species in the advance of this invasive species.
Speaker 2: The wolf snake. That this was an accidental introduction to
Speaker 2: the island or was this one of these cases where
Speaker 2: an organism was introduced to attempt to solve a particular
Speaker 2: problem or anything.
Speaker 3: No, this was an accident and there was a bit
Speaker 3: of a problem on Christmas Island. The biosecurity was not
Speaker 3: there from what I've heard. But this is a snake
Speaker 3: or or a few, and I don't know how many
Speaker 3: it would have been, but it could have been one,
Speaker 3: or it could have been several that basically snuckerboard a
Speaker 3: cargo ship. And this happens a lot. You know, now
Speaker 3: that we've kind of connected the isolated parts of the world,
Speaker 3: we've we've sort of created a transport network for invasive species,
Speaker 3: and that's why biosecurity is so important. But sometimes it's
Speaker 3: not followed or it's lacking, and on Christmas Island it Yeah,
Speaker 3: there were there were species that were introduced in this manner,
Speaker 3: and the wolf snake is one of them. But it
Speaker 3: was it's a specialized skin hunter, but it's it's partial
Speaker 3: to bats and things like that. But it, but it's
Speaker 3: decimated this species with frightening ferocity. There are three species
Speaker 3: in this book that lived in Australian territories. So there
Speaker 3: were these two from Christmas Island, and there was another
Speaker 3: species called the bramble came melmus, which was a species
Speaker 3: of rodent that lived on a sand k in the
Speaker 3: Torres Strait, which is which is just north of Australia,
Speaker 3: but it's an Australian territory. And all three of these
Speaker 3: species really suffered from governmental neglect. There were opportunities to
Speaker 3: save them that weren't taken.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The people that I spoke to who worked with all
Speaker 3: three of these species, they in the case of the
Speaker 3: Christmas Island species, they'd warned the authorities this species is
Speaker 3: going extinct. The skink is a really horrifying example of
Speaker 3: that because David James, who was wonderful ecologist who worked
Speaker 3: on the island and was essentially in charge of monitoring
Speaker 3: basically everything that lived there. You know, he raised the
Speaker 3: alarm about this species in two thousand and five and
Speaker 3: was ignored. You know, he recommended it be categorized as
Speaker 3: threatened in Australia's equivalent of the endangered species List, but
Speaker 3: he wasn't listened to, and it was only classified as
Speaker 3: threatened four months before the extinction of the species in
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. The reason why I think it's important to
Speaker 3: mention that is what's happening right now in America with
Speaker 3: the attempts to water down the Endangered Species Act, the
Speaker 3: the unleashing potentially of the God Squad, I think is
Speaker 3: the name the small body of people who are given
Speaker 3: the unique power to override environmental protections even if it
Speaker 3: causes an extinction. I think, you know, in the best
Speaker 3: of circumstances, you know, politicians are neglect full of environmental issues,
Speaker 3: but the situation in America now is just apocalyptic. Sorry
Speaker 3: to get sorry to get depressing, but actually there was something,
Speaker 3: if you don't mind, there was I got in touch
Speaker 3: with someone, one of the scientists I spoke to for
Speaker 3: this book because I knew I was coming on here
Speaker 3: and I wanted to ask him, you know, if he
Speaker 3: had any thoughts and feelings about the current state of things.
Speaker 3: You know, and I think it's quite important. So I
Speaker 3: don't know if you'd mind if I read it out.
Speaker 3: I was quite sure.
Speaker 2: Oh, by all means.
Speaker 3: So here's what he said, this is Chris Martin, who
Speaker 3: is an evolutionary biologist who specializes in pupfish. He works
Speaker 3: at UC Berkeley, and this is what he had to
Speaker 3: say about this. This government is attempting to strip habitat
Speaker 3: protections provided by the Endangered Species Act, among many other
Speaker 3: threats and cuts to the federal agencies that protect and
Speaker 3: can serve our biodiversity, national parks, and natural spaces. The
Speaker 3: Endangered Species Act was signed by Nixon with strong bipartisan
Speaker 3: support and has inspired the world with its successes in
Speaker 3: bringing back so many species from the brink of extinction,
Speaker 3: including the old Eagle condor and even the Devil's Whole pupfish,
Speaker 3: which was recently rescued from a catastrophic decline this winter
Speaker 3: only through a decade long efforts of the US Fish
Speaker 3: and Wildlife Service to establish a refuge population. We must
Speaker 3: fight to protect everyone in our country and all the
Speaker 3: unique species that have made the United States their home
Speaker 3: for millennia. He also mentioned to me, obviously, you know
Speaker 3: there's a broader context where scientific institutions and universities are
Speaker 3: being stripped of funding and there are layoffs, and it
Speaker 3: sounds horrendous. As an outsider. It sounds, you know, absolutely
Speaker 3: it's a doomsday scenario. But I think it's really important
Speaker 3: that we kind of learn and we understand what happens
Speaker 3: when when people stop caring, you know, when governments turn
Speaker 3: a blind eye, or when you know, in the case
Speaker 3: of the current administration, when they seem to be actively
Speaker 3: advocating by diversity loss and things like that. I think
Speaker 3: Chris is right. I think now is the time to
Speaker 3: fight in whichever way anyone can. I'm probably preaching to
Speaker 3: the choir here. I don't know what your listener base
Speaker 3: is like, but hearing all of this from Chris, it
Speaker 3: really kind of made me sort of realize that the
Speaker 3: bypasss and history of the Endangered Species Act and how
Speaker 3: you know, I'd heard that from you know. Researching this book,
Speaker 3: I've spoken to people who, you know, occupied all kinds
Speaker 3: of positions across the political spectrum, but they did believe
Speaker 3: in the importance of conserving species and your podcast being
Speaker 3: a science podcast. I think, I think, regardless of anyone's
Speaker 3: political affiliations, one thing I think we can all realize
Speaker 3: is that the administration at the moment is profoundly unscientific,
Speaker 3: and regardless of how you feel about any other kind
Speaker 3: of policies. You know, it's just insanity, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean this is you know, not the first guest
Speaker 2: this year or too to bring some version of this
Speaker 2: issue up. And yeah, in the past there has been
Speaker 2: bipartisan support to a large degree to help maintain biodiversity.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's something that needs to be a
Speaker 2: politicized topic. And yet here we are. So that's right,
Speaker 2: you're sharing these starts.
Speaker 3: But I do want to add as well, just to
Speaker 3: add a little note of hope, because I know, you know,
Speaker 3: this must be such a demoralizing situation for many Americans
Speaker 3: to be in. One of the people I spoke to
Speaker 3: you for this book was a fantastic ornithologist, a bird
Speaker 3: ecologist from Brazil, and he talked to me about what
Speaker 3: it was like working under the bolscenario regime, so, you know,
Speaker 3: they had a right wing government. I think it was
Speaker 3: around the same time as the Trump first Trump term,
Speaker 3: which was actively pursuing the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
Speaker 3: And he told me, you know, essentially what happened in
Speaker 3: that time was organizations and conservationists to learn to turn
Speaker 3: away from the federal government where they could you know,
Speaker 3: things became a lot more localized. You know, local administrations
Speaker 3: and local organizations would kind of ban together and try
Speaker 3: and solve the problems together, knowing they couldn't they couldn't
Speaker 3: rely on their government. And you know, I know that
Speaker 3: conservation is as I said earlier, it's full of unstung heroes.
Speaker 3: It's full of everyday heroism. So I really do think
Speaker 3: that people across the country will be doing their best
Speaker 3: to kind of to save what they can, and I
Speaker 3: think they need our support. So I'd encourage anyone who
Speaker 3: who cares about this or feels depressed or demoralized by
Speaker 3: it to try and get involved however you can. So
Speaker 3: there are very often ways that you can volunteer and
Speaker 3: you can help, even small ways. It's more important than
Speaker 3: ever now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, we recently talked with Mark Undinko, who
Speaker 2: runs the Amphibian Foundation here in Atlanta, and that was
Speaker 2: one of the things he brought up is in the
Speaker 2: past they've had to they have leaned on the federal
Speaker 2: agencies for helping some of their research, and a lot
Speaker 2: of that has been going away. And this is just
Speaker 2: one example, you know, a local example for us of
Speaker 2: an organization where people people can now turn and try
Speaker 2: to help support their work if they can't depend on
Speaker 2: funding assistance from governmental agencies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's important to preserve hope. And I think the
Speaker 3: situation is incredibly demoralizing, But there are people who are working.
Speaker 3: There are people to do the right who are trying
Speaker 3: to do the right thing, and I think, you know
Speaker 3: where if we can support them where we can, I
Speaker 3: think that's a really good thing.
Speaker 2: Well, Tom, thanks for coming on the show to chat
Speaker 2: with me. The book again is Lost Wonders ten Tales
Speaker 2: of Extinction from the twenty first century.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks so much for having me Rob. It's it's
Speaker 3: been a real pleasure, and thank you all for listening.
Speaker 2: Thanks once more to Tom for taking time out of
Speaker 2: his day to chat with me. Just a reminder that
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily as Signed and
Speaker 2: culture podcasts with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and
Speaker 2: on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Thanks
Speaker 2: as always to the excellent JJ Possway for producing the show.
Speaker 2: And if you would like to reach out with any questions,
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