Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach, title from a Paula Abdul quote
The backstory for today’s adventure is that this is the first scientific question I seriously researched. It is also the reason I don’t trust the “experts” or the “consensus”. In 1988, E. O. Wilson, an ant expert with little knowledge of extinction, made a startling claim that extinction rates were through the roof. He claimed there was a “Sixth Wave” of extinctions going on, and that we were losing a huge amount, 2.7% of all the species per year. This claim quickly went viral and soon was believed by everyone. So back in 2003, a decade ago now, I researched the question, found that Wilson was wrong by orders of magnitude, wrote it up, sent it around to the journals to see if they would publish it, and … well, let me just say that I was not received kindly. I was a voice crying in the wilderness. They didn’t give me a look-in, I was challenging the consensus. As far as I know, I was the only one saying that Emperor Wilson had no clothes … and as a result, I was not encouraged to continue publicizing my views.
But the world goes on, and three years ago I simplified and streamlined my work and published it as a post on WUWT entitled “Where Are The Corpses“. In it, I argued that there was no “Sixth Wave” of extinctions, that Wilson’s numbers were wildly exaggerated, and that current extinction rates (except in isolated islands and Australia) are not unusual in any way. Dr. Craig Loehle rewrote and developed the ideas, and he got it peer-reviewed and published in Diversity and Distributions, available here. Craig wrote about it in a post entitled “New paper from Loehle & Eschenbach shows extinction data has been wrongly blamed on climate change due to island species sensitivity“. Title says it all …
Figure 1. Stacked graph of total historical bird and mammal extinctions by year. This charts of the spread of European species (foxes, cats, rabbits, dogs, humans, weeds, diseases, etc.) to Australia and the islands. The earliest extinctions are from the time Europeans arrived in the Caribbean. There is a second wave of exploration and settlement in the 1700s. Finally, the spread of empires in the 1800’s led to the peak rates around the turn of the last century. Since then, the rates have dropped.
Having written so early and so extensively to try to debunk the claims of massive extinction rates and the bogus “sixth wave of extinction” hyped by the alarmists, I was pleased to receive a note from Anthony pointing out the publication of a new study in Science magazine (paywalled, naturally) entitled Can We Name Earth’s Species Before They Go Extinct? It’s gotten lots of media attention, mostly due to the fact that in the Abstract, they say that estimates of extinction rates are way overblown. My emphasis:
Some people despair that most species will go extinct before they are discovered. However, such worries result from overestimates of how many species may exist, beliefs that the expertise to describe species is decreasing, and alarmist estimates of extinction rates.
I must say, seeing that phrase “alarmist estimates of extinction rates” in Science made me smile, it was a huge vindication. However, I fear that they still have not grasped the nettle. I say that because at the end of the paper they say:
Conclusion
The estimates of how many species are on Earth (5 ± 3 million) are now more accurate than the moderate predictions of extinction rates (0.01 to 1% per decade). The latter suggest 500 to 50,000 extinctions per decade if there are 5 million species on Earth.
Why do I think that their conclusion is so badly flawed?
Like many modern scientists, rather than trying to find the most probable, they simply assume the worst. So they give their calculations assuming a 1% decadal extinction rate. Here’s the problem. That’s no more believable than Wilson’s 2.7% per decade rate. There are about 3,300 mammal species living on the continents (excluding Australia). If we assume that one percent of them go extinct per decade, that would mean that we should be seeing about 33 continental mammal extinctions per decade. It’s worse for birds, a 1% extinction rate for birds would be about 80 continental birds per decade. We have seen absolutely nothing even vaguely resembling that. That’s only slightly below Wilson’s estimate of a 2.7% extinction rate, and is still ridiculously high.
Instead of 33 mammals and 80 birds going extinct on the continents per decade, in the last 500 years on the great continental landmasses of the world, we’ve only seen three mammals and six birds go extinct. Only nine continental mammal and bird species are known to have gone extinct in 500 years. Three mammals and six birds in 500 years, that’s less than one continental mammal extinction per century, and these highly scientific folks are claiming that 30 mammals and 80 birds are going extinct per decade? … once again I’m forced to ask, where are the corpses?
This kind of world-blindness astounds me. I’ve heard of living in an ivory tower, but if you were making the claim that it’s raining, wouldn’t you at least look out the ivory windows to see if water were actually falling from the sky? How can you seriously claim that we’re losing dozens and dozens of species per year when there is absolutely no sign of that in the records?
Because the reality is that despite humans cutting down the forests of the world at a rate of knots for hundreds and hundreds of years, despite clearcutting for lumber, despite slash-and-burn, despite conversions to cropland, despite building hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and fences, despite everything … only nine continental mammal and bird species have gone extinct.
That gives us actual, not theoretical but actual, estimates of the historical extinction rates for continental birds and animals. For continental mammals that works out to 3 extinctions per 3,300 continental mammal species per 50 decades equals 0.002% per decade, somewhat below their low estimate of 0.01% per decade. For birds, it’s 6 extinctions per 8000 continental species per 50 decades, which is only slightly lower. If we assume that we’ve missed four out of five of the historical extinctions, very unlikely but I suppose possible, it still works out to only about 0.01%.
So their very lowest estimate, that of an extinction rate of 0.01% per decade, turns out to be a maximum estimate of what we’ve seen on the continents over the last five centuries.
Now, this does not include the islands and Australia. Rates there have historically been quite high. But the high historical rates there, as shown above in Figure 1, are the result of what might be called “First Contact”—the first introduction of numbers of European plants, animals, and diseases to previously isolated areas. But in 2013, there are few islands on the planet that haven’t seen First Contact. As a result, the extinction rates on the islands and in Australia, while still higher than on the continents, are extremely unlikely to have another peak such as they had at First Contact.
Finally, let me say that the low extinction rates should not be any cause for complacency. What my studies have shown is that the real threat to mammal and bird species is not habitat reduction, as incorrectly claimed for the last couple decades. The real extinction threat to birds and mammals is now and always has been predation, either by humans, or by imported “alien” species, particularly on islands. Hunting by humans threatens bonobo chimpanzees and other primates, as well as tigers, rhinoceros, and other mammal and bird species. Hunting is the extinction threat, not habitat destruction, and always has been, whether the hunters were animals or humans.
CODA
People are always giving me grief about how I’m not getting with the picture, I’m not following the herd, I’m not kowtowing to the consensus. I have no problem doing that, particularly given my experience regarding extinctions. For years I was the only person I knew of who was making the claim that E. O. Wilson should have stuck to his ants and left extinctions alone. Wherever I looked scientists disagreed with my findings. I didn’t have one person I knew, or one person I read, who thought I was right. Heck, even now, a decade later, the nettle still hasn’t been grasped, people are just beginning to realize that they were fools to blindly believe Wilson, and to try to manage a graceful climb down from the positions they took.
What I learned in that episode was that my bad number detector works quite well, that I should stick to my guns if I think I’m right, and that I should never, ever, ever place any faith in the opinions of the experts. They were all wrong, every single last swingin’ Richard of them, and I was right. Doesn’t mean I’ll be right next time, I’ve been wrong plenty both before and since … but it has given me the courage to hold on to some extremely minority positions.
It is my strong belief that I will also be vindicated in my claim that the earth’s temperature is regulated, not by CO2, but by a host of interlocking and mutually supportive homeostatic mechanisms that maintain the temperature within a fairly narrow range … time will tell. In my opinion, the experts in the climate field have shown that they don’t know a whole lot more about the real underpinnings of the climate than E. O. Wilson knew about extinctions … but that’s just me, and YMMV.
The very finest of a lovely day to you all,
w.
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trafamadore says:
January 25, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Yes, the Red List does say that … however, I fear they are far from neutral. Remember that if the extinction threat vanished tomorrow, they’d be out of a job … so which way do you think they’ll swing?
The Red List folks have bought in totally to the “Sixth Wave of Extinction” from habitat reduction. As a result, they have put a whole raft of species on the threatened list. They say these species are threatened with extinction because their habitat has been reduced … and now you say that the thousands on the threatened list are evidence that habitat reduction is a real threat. Unfortunately, that is circular logic that only Ouroboros would be proud of.
Actually, trafamadore, Wilson’s claims about how the species-area relationship can be used to calculate extinction risk are on their last legs. Fewer and fewer people believe them. He does know a lot more than me about ants. He should have stuck with that. His cockamamie claims on the bogus “Sixth Wave” have done nothing but damage to the environmental movement.
Wilson claimed that since 1988, we’ve been condemning 27,000 species per year to extinction. By now, that makes a total of well over a half a million species that Wilson says are on death row, some of them for a long time … so where are the corpses?
Wilson’s claims are a joke, trafamadore. They sounded great if you didn’t do the math, I guess, or if you weren’t suspicious like me. As a result, the claims suckered almost everyone, including scientists that should have known better, and obviously including yourself, into believing that we were losing hundreds of thousands of species … not happening, my friend. Wilson was wrong, wrong, wrong.
So perhaps you should not listen to our E. O. Wilson, trafamadore, unless you want to go down with the sinking ship. He knows less about extinction than you give him credit for.
w.
Trafamadore,
Your post is interesting to me. I’ve read Willis’s ‘Where Are The Corpses’ post. Can you explain specifically which part of his analysis you believe is incorrect? For example, has he made some sort of error in your view in categorizing ‘island/Australian extinctions’ vrs ‘continental’? Do you believe the numbers he researched came from a false source? Is his math wrong? Etc.
I’m curious because your post stating that Wilson knows a lot more about extinction than Willis appeared to be totally devoid of support. Do you actually have anything with which to support your contention?
Which brings us to the part I find interesting. When you posted this, surely you expected someone would ask you to justify your position, yet you posted without any such justification anyway. You must have had some reason. What was it?
trafamadore says:
January 25, 2013 at 5:26 pm
It wasn’t habitat destruction that killed those frogs off (if indeed they are actually extinct), it was and is chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease (transmitted by biologists studying amphibians?). So trafamadore, what would be the background extinction rate were humans never introduced to Earth? Are you saying that amphibian extinction is mirrored in the mammal and avian kingdoms? As Willis said, the extinction claims are wildly improbable when subjected first to the smell test and then to some back of envelope calculations. Like the boy who cried wolf, if your Wilson types keep spewing patent nonsense, will we credit them if they inadvertently tell the truth?
Ever read abut bird choppers? Killer Green!
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8807761/wind-farms-vs-wildlife/
Steve P says:
January 25, 2013 at 1:00 pm
Nice article, but I think you are incorrect about habitat destruction and/or environmental degradation, which I include as habitat destruction.
We know that birds like Falcons and Eagles in N. America were just about extirpated because of toxins in the environment, although there is disagreement, I believe, about precisely which toxin(s) were responsible; some say DDT, while others point to lead in gas.
Whatever it was that just about cleared (Bald) Eagles and (Peregrine) Falclns from the skies of N. America, it was not hunting.
trafamadore
January 25, 2013 at 5:26 pm
###
I think the question was in regards to REAL species, not some fantasy names made up to inflate the number of endangered species in RedBook. Almost every single worker in anura is a nut-case. No one should trust the validity of any amphibian taxon created in the last 20 years.
I am sure that many readers of WUWT don’t have time to become experts in all of the various fields discussed here. The taxonomy of amphibians is probably pretty obscure to most. For the past 20 years or so the Marxist have been placing great emphasis on using frogs as a focus of propaganda, screeching about the imminent loss of gazzillions of species of them. Frogs are ideal. They are cute, and many people are attracted to them. They are also difficult to study, and often go unnoticed in the world, so by and large most people are truly ignorant about them. The last means that it is very easy to lie about their state. Along with this has been a push to describe every regional variant as a species specifically to make their plight seem dire and to create a means to steal private property. Maybe 5% of the recently described frogs are valid. It has been no accident that their have been all of those reports of froggy disasters trumpeted from the rooftops that have turned out to be completely wrong.
trafamadore says:
January 25, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Based on the the Red List, more than 16,000 species
###
And guess what WHO CARES. If the influence of man did not exist, the contents of the Red List would not change. That document is laughably flawed. For one thing I would erase every single name that was added in 1996.
You probably should stop before you make even more of a fool of yourself then you have already.
Willis contributes a lot to this site but there are a lot of over-siimplifications in this particular article. First, its a bit unfair to blame E. O. Wilson for the hyped claims made by Greenpeace and the like about extinction due to climate change. Most biologists would agree with Willis that the threats from alien introductions, especially of diseases such as avian pox and avian malaria, are more urgent problems at least for birds than is climate change. However, extinction is a real and ongoing problem, regardless of the cause. I agree that climate change has been over-hyped, but Island species extinctions are on-going in birds especially, e.g. two species have been lost in the the Hawaiian Islands alone since 1980 despite huge efforts to save them. Similarly, the California Condor would certainly have been lost if it were not for millions of dollars spent on a captive breeding program – there are many other examples of birds saved “just in time” and at great expense, eg the Lord How Island woodhen and the Rarotongan Flycatcher.
Nowhere does Willis mention plants or invertebrates or the vast majority of species that are neither birds nor mammals, although they are presumably implied when he mentions numbers like five million species for the planet. Most of the rest of his discussion concerns the way-less-than-one per cent that are birds or mammals. In Hawaii, about a hundred plants are thought to have become extinct in the last one hundred and fifty years. A few will doubtless get rediscovered, but probably not most of these. Much of this is due to habitat destruction, pigs, and the like although some may be due to bird pollinators becoming extinct. About half the native Hawaiian land birds have gone extinct since European contact. As for continents versus islands, an extinction is an extinction wherever it occurs
How does Willis know how many birds went extinct before lets say about 1800? The world and its fauna was scarcely known then, lets have some references to back up these counter-intuitively precise numbers.
Having said all that, Willis is right about climate change not being the primary concern, in my view. Indeed the warmists have damaged the cause of saving species both by focussing on the wrong threat and by damaging the credibility (by confusing people and by over-hyping things) of those who are concerned with preventing further species losses.
John Game
California
trafamadore says:
January 25, 2013 at 5:26 pm
============
How do you know they are extinct ?
Maybe they just evolved.
Yes, if they died it sucks, but on this planet there is a food chain.
You don’t have to like it, but there it is.
Outlawing defense mechanisms ensures extinction.
Willis Eschenbach says: “Wilson’s claims are a joke, trafamadore. They sounded great if you didn’t do the math, I guess, or if you weren’t suspicious like me.”
The math? How can you do the math? You don’t know, do you you? We don’t either, I admit, because we don’t know a species is gone until many years after the event has happened, but at least we try to estimate, and you don’t even think of it. Of course the IUCN list is part of the estimate, because those happen to be the species that end up on the extinction list, or havent you noticed that, prob’ly not, because they are “they are far from neutral.” Whatever, that’s your opinion but only that.
Have you considered that in your analysis you only look at mammal and birds. Less than 1% of the species? Prob’ly not. My frog list above, in one little list, outnumbers your entire list for any decade?
trafamadore climbs down:
“Hum. So are you like one of the poor students I haf to teach? So a frog is not a plant or a bacteria.”
Translation:
“I cannot name even two (2) animal species that have officially gone extinct in the past decade.” [I had challenged trafamadore to name two animal species. As Desert Coyote notes, one frog species can have multiple names.]
So with that strange comment, trafamadore climbs down. I will agree with him, though, about his “poor students.” Can you imagine the pseudo-scientific nonsense they have to upchuck in order to pass?
@GoodBusiness says:
January 25, 2013 at 10:51 am
“You paper is well reasoned and will be attacked by the entire E=GREEN industry. For their goal is to reduce HUMAN populations by 2/3 as stated by the Sierra Club, Green Peace and others that pay for a green research institute – their chief Scientist got on TV and said for the earth to become 100% sustainable humans must reduce their population by 2/3 or maybe 4 billion need to die to save the world.”
I would like to look that up. Link?
DesertYote says:”I think the question was in regards to REAL species, not some fantasy names made up to inflate the number of endangered species in RedBook.”
You are a poor excuse for a living being. Any species is equal to the human species, and if you think that some species are “fantasy species” and some arent, then I have no problem will electing you to a fantasy species of subhumans.
Actually the Red List says stuff like this… (about those frogs)
It is known only from the holotype. There have been no records since its original collection and the species is now believed to be extinct because recent, extensive field surveys of the amphibian fauna of Sri Lanka, including at the type locality, have not rediscovered this frog.
It is known only from the lost holotype. There have been no records since the species was described in 1853, and it is now believed to be extinct. Recent, extensive field surveys of the amphibian fauna of Sri Lanka, including at the type locality, have failed to rediscover this frog.
In other words — maybe it was — maybe it wasn’t — maybe it was something else…
So I dunno — it looks like the claims are not even dubious — they are speculation.
Just sayin’
D.B. Stealey says: “Translation:I cannot name even two (2) animal species that have officially gone extinct in the past decade.” [I had challenged trafamadore to name two animal species. As Desert Coyote notes, one frog species can have multiple names.So with that strange comment, trafamadore climbs down. I will agree with him, though, about his “poor students.” Can you imagine the pseudo-scientific nonsense they have to upchuck in order to pass?”
You should really take a biology class some day. At the High School level to start.
I came across a problem with extinction rates when I learned of the concept of ‘locally extinct’. Biologists use this term routinely, and of course, it sometimes gets mixed up with real or broader patterns of extinctions when calculating rates.
If something is only ‘locally extinct’, then by definition it is NOT extinct. It can be reintroduced, it can simply have been displaced by e.g. a new town or city. Kanagaroos are locally extinct in Sydney, big deal, there are plenty of them in the outback. The east Australian current brings warm water fish down the east coast each year, which then due when the current fails or cools. They become ‘locally extinct’, only to return the next year.
Also, islands are not continents. This same argument is used ad infinitum regarding Easter Island and how that culture’s demise is a warning to us all. Yes, but isolated islands are not continents, they don’t trade, they dont benefit from exponentially increasing advantages with increasing land areas. The relationship between an island’s sensitivity and a continent’s is not linear.
And about Easter Island, don’t get me started-I have a theory that it was largely a corrupt and entrenched bureacracy that did it, i.e. people in power enforcing a rigid religious system, and not allowing the people to adapt and change when things became grim. In other words, it was not a environmental disaster spawned from an unregulated market cutting down all the trees, as often claimed, it was a an environmental disaster spawned from a rigid religious-environmental bureaucracy-the same kind of rigid religious-environmental bureaucracy that stifles scientifitic debate at times now.
Here is one “pending extinction” on the Red List… so other than canine distemper — what is leading to the (possible) extinction or what is the nature of the threat?
Could it be Conservation? Could it be Global Warming? Could it Be “The Green Wave”???
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/maritanoon/2012/08/17/third_largest_power_company_in_the_world_is_the_third_largest_recipient_of_risky_loans/page/full/
Environment
Remember that the common denominator of these “special seven” projects was a “fast-tracked DOI approval?” The policy has come back to bite the projects.
According to the Los Angeles Times (LAT), “The $1-billion Genesis Solar Energy Project has been expedited by state and federal regulatory agencies that are eager to demonstrate that the nation can build solar plants quickly to ease dependence on fossil fuels and curb global warming. Instead, the project is providing a cautionary example of how the rush to harness solar power in the desert can go wrong—possibly costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and dealing an embarrassing blow to the Obama administration’s solar initiative.”
The problem is the “expedited” process may endanger the whole project. The House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform’s March 20, 2012 report says, “To expedite site approval, NextEra opted for a less thorough process.” As a result, the site “encroached on the habitat of the endangered kit foxes.” NextEra had to move the foxes prior to grading the site. “Ultimately, seven foxes died from NextEra’s removal process.”
Additionally, there have been concerns of desert tortoises and a “prehistoric human settlement.”
But warring factions within the environmental movement also plague the NextEra Genesis Solar project.
You really do have to look at habitat loss — and why it is occurring. — he’s right.
Here in Canada the same company rips out bald eagle nests to make way for wind turbines? Just google “Ontario Wind Resistance” there are lots of stories… and lots of protests and the Government? Issuing “secret permits”…
So it seems species do go missing — that’s conservation for you…
trafamadore says, ” So think about it, each of these species is gone forever. Forever. Like the dinosaurs. Our children will never see them. Never. They might as well be the dinosaurs, except we know what color their skin was and that they didnt have feathers”….
Who cares! It is the future creatures that matter.
We constantly see reference to “threatened” or “endangered” marine animals but there are no records of extinctions of any marine fish or invertebrate due to human activity and only two species of marine mammals. This does not mean that there are no threats at all but the real number of marine species facing any genuine risk of extinction has been grossly exaggerated. Most of the marine species on the Red List have populations in the millions.
John Game says:
January 25, 2013 at 6:19 pm
Since Wilson invented the “Sixth Wave of Extinction” claims, and invented the use of the fatally flawed “species-area” relationship for predicting extinctions, why on earth would he not bear responsibility for his own hyped claims? He is the one that came up with the wildly overblown “27,000 species committed to extinction each year” nonsense, not Greenpeace and the like. Did you read my underlying post, “Where are the corpses”? I went over all this, do try to keep up.
Which is what I said.
Yes, I covered those topics as well, either in this post, the scientific paper, or my first post.
True. I also didn’t mention insects, archaea, or Teddy Roosevelt for that matter. Like all studies, my study concerned itself with a specific range of subjects. That’s how science works.
Oh, man, I already explained upthread why it just covers birds and mammals. Read the thread, it will save you from this kind of claims.
Again, so what? I have made no claims about plants or bacteria or a host of things. What do they have to do with me? In any case, the overwhelming number of island species have gone extinct from predation. Not habitat reduction. Predation. Get that into your head. Predation causes extinction. Habitat reduction doesn’t cause extinctions. At best it is a very minor factor.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK. I spelled out the sources of all of my data in my previous post, which I cited at the top, so that people wouldn’t have to bug me about stuff I’ve already gone over … but nooo, you obviously think that you’re better than that, you don’t need to read the source documents before uncapping your electronic pen … bad mistake.
To answer your question once again, as I said in my previous post, I have taken the numbers from the best of our scientific references, which is the Red List for birds and the CREO for mammals. References in the first paper. You don’t like the numbers, go bitch at them, I’m not interested.
You haven’t pointed out one single thing that I’ve been wrong about, John, so your “having said all that” is entirely superfluous.
However, I totally agree with your closing, that “the warmists have damaged the cause of saving species”, which is a tragedy to me. Contrary to what you seem to think, the fate of the other species on this planet is very important to me. That’s why I don’t like people haring around chasing imaginary causes for extinction. It means that they’re not dealing with the real causes, and that is a loss for us all.
My thanks, I apologize for hollering at you but man, you really do need to do your homework before challenging me … I’ve spent some years thinking about this stuff, and have published on it, so give me the benefit of the doubt, and we can have a discussion.
w.
trafamadore says:
“You should really take a biology class…”
trafamadore still can’t name 2 animal species that went extinct in the past decade. So he changes the subject. That’s a FAIL, no?
Chapter 31 of Julian Simon’s great book The Ultimate Resource 2 (second edition of The Ultimate Resource) debunks alarmist claims of a species holocaust. That came out in 1996. Simon’s work inspired Bjorn Lomborg to write The Skeptical Environmentalist (1998), which has its own debunking of species holocaust in chapter 23.
The ultimate resource of course is people. Simon’s book should on everybody’s short list of the most important books ever written. It is the definitive answer to Malthus and the neo-Malthusians, cogent and encyclopedic at the same time, and written throughout with a deep understanding of the productive energies that are unleashed by liberty.
You know, you win some and you lose some. The very least you can ever hope for is to be able to tell the difference. Geosynclinal theory did not segue gracefully into Plate Tectonics, et al.
Craig Loehle says:
January 25, 2013 at 5:38 pm
Thanks, Craig, I hadn’t picked up on that detail, that’s hilarious. Stark was a reviewer on our paper and an author on this paper and didn’t cite our work?
The NIH syndrome at work … pretty chintzy of them not to cite us, given that. Oh well, such is life, but man … how petty can you get?
My suspicion as to his motive for doing that? What I said in the head post, they are unwilling to actually grasp the nettle, and citing our paper would have made that fact obvious … instead they highlight and feature the very highest estimate of extinction, they want the climbdown from the ridiculous extinction estimates to be slow enough so no one notices much …
All the best, thanks again for putting in most of the work on getting the paper published,
w.
PS— NIH = “Not Invented Here” …
Another excellent post Willis!
Thank you
But, Paula Abdul?
Steve P: Bald eagles definitely live in dry areas. Where I live in a dry region of the west. The only water available is from one river running through the city. There are reservoirs 30 miles from my residence. Golden eagles are the more dominate species here but there are definitely bald eagles around. They will eat fish when they can get it and rabbits, etc. when they can’t get fish. They also eat gut piles from deer, etc, during hunting season. (You are correct that goldens were probably most often shot, though the feeling that any eagle is a bad thing is not uncommon.)
trafamadore: Are you saying it’s a sad thing your children will never see a TRex?
I want to clarify my comment on habitat reduction. I do not believe that habitat reduction causes extinction, but rather can reduce numbers until the animal/bird/reptile adapts. Antelope in Wyoming have learned to jump fences much like deer do, as more and more land is fenced. Thirty years ago, this was very rare. Now, it’s not the most frequent method used (they slide under the fence if they can) but they are learning. For a while, in hard winters, the fences did reduce antelope numbers. Again, I don’t believe a reduction in numbers leads to extinction necessarily.
The fact that species are gone forever is part of the way life on earth works. While there is no need to wipe out species indiscriminately, some species will always be lost. Those with very limited diets, very limited ranges, etc. would go extinct with or without man getting involved. Things change and they always will.