In this photo taken Saturday, Aug. 23, 2014 and provided by the Seychelles Islands Foundation (SIF), an adult Aldabra Banded Snail (Rhachistia aldabrae) is examined at the discovery site in dense mixed scrub forest on the coastal fringe of Malabar island, Aldabra Atoll, Seychelles. The Seychelles Islands Foundation says the Aldabra banded snail, previously thought to be extinct, has been rediscovered “alive and well” at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles. (AP Photo/SIF, C. Onezia)
Seychelles snail, believed extinct due to climate change, found ‘alive and well,’ says group
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A snail once thought to have been among the first species to go extinct because of climate change has reappeared in the wild.
The Aldabra banded snail, declared extinct seven years ago, was rediscovered on Aug. 23 in the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles. The mollusk, which is endemic to the Aldabra coral atoll — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — had not been seen on the islands since 1997, said the Seychelles Islands Foundation.
Conservationists are celebrating the banded snail’s reemergence.
…
The snail’s apparent demise was linked to declining rainfall on Aldabra, and was widely considered to be among the first species whose extinction could be directly tied to global warming, said biologist Justin Gerlach, a scientific coordinator for the Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles.
Full story here (h/t to WUWT reader O2bnaz2)
It’s a miracle! Praise Gaia.
A Festivus miracle?
Exactly, you hit the snail on the head.
Festivus for the rest of us.
Every species on earth will go extinct. Period. And if we keep making darwinesque fools of ourselves, ours will be sooner rather than later.
Hear Hear!
The snail’s apparent demise was linked to declining rainfall on Aldabra, and was widely considered to be among the first species whose extinction could be directly tied to global warming, said biologist Justin Gerlach, a scientific coordinator for the Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles.
I’m wating with bated breath for Mr. Gerlach to produce rainfall records for the Seychelles indicating a decline in rainfall in the last 50 years. Even if he can come up with such a record, I’d like to know how he or anyone can conclusively say that ‘t’was global warming what done it’…
How could it be the 1st when 99.9% of all species to ever exist have already went extinct to climate change. Oh, I forgot the religious zealots believe the climate was stable then just recently changed.
I hear tell that some professor of Meteorology (I think he may even be distinguished) has several graphs indicating that very thing. You’d think that something so important would be worthy of a Nobel prize, and that a person wouldn’t have to stoop so low as to lie about having been awarded one…
Hear, hear! We might just be the 0.1% of species to actually embrace climate change!
+1.0C per century doesn’t sound too bad. Quite nice in fact…
Shame we are cooling, or about too.
That will be fun.
Species will always become extinct.
Here is an Essay in Nature
It would be foolish to declare species extinct before you are really sure.
New species found
http://www.theguardian.com/science/series/new-to-nature
Rediscovered species found
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com+rediscovered+species&btnG=Search&gws_rd=ssl
“Conservationists are celebrating the banded snail’s reemergence.”
I seriously doubt that.
Ain’t no party like a conservationist party.
Yeah, certain zealots among the Gang Green would have stomped on the poor little fellows and report a hands-on survey that definitely proved the snail was gone. Remember the golden toad extinction in Costa Rica due to biologists with dirty equipment infecting them with a deadly fungus from a South African toad that carries it. They quickly published a few phoney papers on global warming being the perp. The grand worldwide dying back of hundreds of toad and frog species coincided with scientific collecting of species to get the best one for making the pregnancy tester. Gee you don’t think they reused their rubber gloves over again do you?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/01/the_amphibian_pregnancy_test.html
WUWT had an article on it too but I cant find a search engine in this new format.
The search box is one page-down from the top of the page, just above “Site Stats.”
The Warmist-conservationist sub-species only celebrates when it has something to deplore.
The Audubon Society reports that half the birds in the U.S. will be disrupted. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/us/climate-change-will-disrupt-half-of-north-americas-bird-species-study-says.html?_r=0 However, Ducks unlimited reports an increase in U.S. duck population for 2014. What’s up with that? These studies are,at best, questionable.
Here’s the Duck’s Unlimited link http://www.ducks.org/hunting/migration
I agree with the Audubon’s report. Damn those pesky wind turbine cuisinarts/solar panel roasters.
The bird population is being disrupted because they are being killed by the huge wind turbines that have been installed throughout the world. I personally prefer seeing birds flying freely than to see those ugly (terribly expensive) things ruining the once lovely landscape of our country.
I went off Audubon when I learned that his, rather wobbly, research was the basis for the long-held belief that birds can’t smell. Like so many entrenched ideas, however daft, this took a lot of disproving and was only really settled about 30 years ago. CAGW will be equally hard to dislodge, no doubt…
Yet more foolishness from the doom&doom crowd. There was never anyway to suspect, much less prove, that the animal went extinct due to the rainfall amounts and absolutely no way to prove that the rainfall amounts were impacted by the magic molecule CO2 in the atmosphere.
How long can this anti-science madness go on?
As long as the money lasts.
How can you prove that the slug has gone extinct in the first place. Do they do an annual census on them ?
OK I have to….
Look at that little S-CAR-GO!
Groan.
Never wanting an old joke to go unspoiled, shouldn’t that be:
“Look at that S-car turn around” ?
That little guy is going to need to be in the safe house protection program now. The hit squads of the policy priests will be sent in to rub it out to match earlier policy claims and spending programs.
I agree,
Once you’ve been declared dead by The Mob, your expected to stay dead.
Not in Chicago – There you get resurrected for every election…
The same climate rapid reaction force who uprooted the tree which Alex Morner showed proved sea level rise is a lie, will now be flying to the Seychelles to stamp on some snails. Nice work if you can get it.
That would explain the extra butter and garlic ordered for the plane’s galley.
It is important in these types of matters to identify the fools associated with such statements:
“This purple snail — the Aldabra banded snail — is a resident of the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean and is easily recognizable because of its conspicuous purplish blue shell. Though it was once easy to find 3 decades ago, [Oxford University biologist Justin] Gerlach says that now “it has been impossible to find. The last one was found in 1997 and it was collected simply because the person who collected it thought it was strange and didn’t know what it was.” Gerlach believes the species went extinct during the late 1990s following a series of unusually long and hot summers that killed off a large number of younger snails.He reached this conclusion after observing that the smaller shells once commonly picked up by collectors were vanishing with the advent of the longer, hotter summers — a phenomenon he attributes to global warming. If his intuition is correct, that would make the Aldabra banded snail the first climate change related casualty.
“And, as Diane Debinski — a biologist at Iowa State University who researches the links between climate change and extinctions — grimly observed, it certainly won’t be the last: “I think what we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg in terms of extinction events. I expect that we’re going to be seeing more stories like this.” While she isn’t convinced that global warming was to blame for the banded snail’s extinction, she does admit that most research has demonstrated that the most vulnerable species tend to reside in isolated habitats — such as islands or mountain tops.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12600707 (delanda est NPR)
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/is-the-aldabra-banded-snail-the-first-global-warming-related-extinction.html
Well, they should recover a bit now that we quit warming….more time to adapt.
We are IMO on the top of a climate sine curve, and are spending money on the past instead of providing the ability to adapt to a colder future. How many have to die of the cold before we have enough of false leaders?
Wonder if ” observing that the smaller shells once commonly picked up by collectors” had anything to do with their decline. Nah, that’s just indigenous hunter gathers. we all know that’s just innocent nature at work.
so an increase in rainfall made the snails existence possible….
…and a decrease in rainfall made the snails existence perilous
who’d a thunk it…..it must be pappa snail, mama snail, and baby snail…..just right
“He reached this conclusion after observing that the smaller shells once commonly picked up by collectors were vanishing”……………………..LOL, they found a market for the shells and wiped them out
Clearly brought back to life by the hiatus;>)
Good one!
All hail the snail.
Another good one!
If the Climate didn’t kill them, they must be the world’s first climate adapters 😉
Wow! Global warming can kill off species AND bring them back again!
Is there anything it can’t do?
Only one? Is this species hermaphroditic?
Otherwise, there’s a new eco film looming … The Last of The Aldabras’
Probably and somehow starring Daniel Day-Lewis. I suppose the music sound track will necessarily be Tempo Larghissimo.
“Conservationists are celebrating the banded snail’s reemergence.”
I’m sure there were some mixed responses. Perhaps there was an aw chytt moment when it was realized that the death pronouncement was inaccurate. It is surprising the “rediscovery” found them “alive and doing well” after having been pronounced gone. Who would know the difference? Obviously it was a little early to announce their demise, but how many set backs like this will there be before there is some fudging of the data to keep up appearances.
Of course it could be turned into a money maker. Instead of being alive and well, it could have been a call for help. What a missed opportunity. I can see the wildlife fund adverts for the save the snail foundation. Just send in the money and we will take care of the rest. Do it now before they are gone!
It is hard to get away with claiming polar bears and penguins are going extinct because somebody can find otherwise, as we have seen. But, some obscure thing like this snail could easily be hoaxed out of existence, or to the edge of extinction, and nobody would be the wiser. How many field mice, and pikas, and pup fish, and owls, frogs, turtles and the like are really going extinct? Or, are we being fooled?
Conservationists were happy, environmentalist were not
I’ve done a bit of field work in Biology. The snail never left. It didn’t “join the bleedin’ choir invisible.”
It is alive!!!
Arrgh..
If I’m looking for an animal, and I don’t find it, can I then write a paper and become a famed mass extinction event alarmist. It seems so.
I haven’t seen Giraffes today. It is rather cold here in Germany; so I guess the Climate Change killed the last one.
+1
“linked to declining rainfall on Aldabra, and was widely considered to be among the first species whose extinction could be directly tied to global warming,”
Now if they could only link declining rainfall to global warming, they would have something.
So this snail was supposedly made extinct by declining rainfall caused by the increased rainfall caused by global warming
It is a plant. Big Oil has a huge refrigerated tanker ship that was passing by and it dropped off a couple of stored containers of Aldabra Banded Snails just so they could be ‘rediscovered’. The person making the ‘rediscovery’ was probably in the pay of big oil.
/sarc
Another CAGW prognostication down the tubes!
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A snail once thought to have been among the first species to go extinct because of climate change has reappeared in the wild.
===============
proof positive. global warming has ended.
But, some obscure thing like this snail could easily be hoaxed out of existence
=================
Wealth In Snail Farming Business
http://www.nairaland.com/1326621/wealth-snail-farming-business
Did you know that snails are the most prolific livestock animal producing more than 150 eggs at a time in one clutch? Its also the livestock that requires less stress in breeding them. You can buy a baby snail for less than N30 and make more than N200 as profit on such snail when it reaches table size.
The prolific aspect is that you can decide to breed 4 snails and before a year runs out you will have more than a thousand snails in your snail farm.
http://www.nairaland.com/1326621/wealth-snail-farming-business
headline – “Climate Change Causes Virgin Birth” – lock up your daughters. It is worse than we thought.
That’s gotta be wrong- it must be an entirely new species that simply resembles the recent departed.
OMG! Climate Mutations… Oh the humanity…
It worse than we thought!
Snails are hermaphrodites. Some snails play both roles at once and fertilize each other simultaneously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliciculture
Diane Debinski — a biologist at Iowa State University who researches the links between climate change and extinctions — grimly observed, it certainly won’t be the last: “I think what we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg in terms of extinction events. I expect that we’re going to be seeing more stories like this.”
===========
Diane is worried that even more species will come back from the dead. Totally invalidating her work. Zombie snails, feasting on the living.
For most of the 20th century there was a trend to assign species status to just about everything that was slightly different. With DNA testing so readily available, they are beginning to find out that a number of so-called species may not even deserve sub-species status…race, breed or variety would be good enough. As such the ‘parent’ species grows in number and many of these ‘endangered’/nearly extinct outlying populations disappear.
Not saying that this is the case with this snail, but if it is just a variant of a more common species, that can account for its supposed extinction and return.
About the only thing that has gone extinct due to climate change is rational thought…and it can be conclusively proven this is so…just look at the daily headlines claiming the phenominal cosmc powers of CO2 and the never ending list of things CAGW/CAGCC have done, could do or maybe, someday, at some uncertain time, in the future may possibly be able to be able to do something simlar to…
“Only time will tell if they can survive the threats of climate change and sea level rise,” Gerlach said.
He’s worried about sea level rise…when the snail is endemic to the Aldabra coral atoll. <.<
Yet another claim by climate obsessed extremists is proven wrong.
I think they need to strap a GPS to the snail and see where he goes.
I hope they remembered to tag it.
I can see it now. The Aldabra Banded Snail re-extinct as the last known specimen is crushed under the weight of a GPS tracking device.
How about a GoPro?
I am your plants,I grow best in a greenhouse where I am warm. I need & get lots of CO2 & water to grow. I love sunlight .I am your food.
I am God ,I control the weather; Genesis 9:11-15. Man-made global warming is blasphemy!
This snail is obviously a denier.
I think maybe, dinner for some other creature.
I wonder what kills the little guy?
Terrible tragedy for the alarmists.
Let’s hope that it becomes extinct very soon for their sakes…
Truthia Ethicae was the first casualty of Climate change. Circa, Mike’s Nature Trick.
There was a Brown University report last week that claimed “Extinctions During Human Era One Thousand Times More Than Before.” I know they blame the extinctions of many large mammals on early humans, but have there really been that many species that have gone extinct recently, say since global warming became the latest alarmist fad? Is there a list somewhere?
Since CAGW was responsible for the snails demise, doesn’t the snail’s re-emergence mean CAGW is over? Before you scoff at that logic, compare it to current Climate ‘Science’.
A lot of nonsense as usual.
a) Aldabra is not part of the Seychelles, its an isolated atoll 400 miles away.
b) There have been a lot of invasive species introduced (rats, cats, goats) causing extensive habitat deterioration and at least one extinction (Aldabra Bush Warbler Nesillas aldabrana).
Unfortunately extinction of native snails (and other organisms) on oceanic islands through introduced predators is a very common occurrence.
Extinction by climate change, on the other hand, has as far as I know never been reliably observed.
Louis says:
“have there really been that many species that have gone extinct recently, say since global warming became the latest alarmist fad? Is there a list somewhere?”
Depends on what you mean by “recently”, but oh yes, there has been a lot of extinctions, most of them on islands and the “small continents” (Australia, Madagascar, New Zealand)., but there have been quite a few on the continents too. For example a large proportion of the fresh-water mussel species in eastern North America. Causes: human-introduced predators, habitat destruction and overhunting, probably in that order. Through climate-change, no. For example North America has lost six birds species in the last 150 years:
Labrador Duck (overhunting)
Eskimo Curlew (overhunting)
Carolina Parakeet (overhunting)
Passenger Pigeon (overhunting and habitat destruction)
Ivory-billed Woodpecker (habitat destruction)
Bachman’s Warbler (habitat destruction)
One of the many pernicious effects of the CAGW hysteria is that in this area too, a lot of attention is focussed on a non-issue while more pressing problems get ignored.
It’s a ‘may be extinct’ on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker…
http://www.fws.gov/ivorybill/
Anyway, for ‘verifiable’ extinctions due to climate change you’d probably have to go back to the last glaciation to find them, either at the beginning or the end.
Unfortunately not much of a “maybe”, I’m afraid. It has not been reliably observed for half a century, and those large Campephilus woodpeckers are pretty noticeable.
“Anyway, for ‘verifiable’ extinctions due to climate change you’d probably have to go back to the last glaciation to find them, either at the beginning or the end.”
Not that many extinctions can be assigned to glaciations either, and those usually happen at maximum glaciation (as you might expect), not at the beginning or end.
There was a lot of extinctions back at the beginning of the Pleistocene c. 2.5 million years ago as glaciation got started, and another wave about 0.8-1.0 million years ago as glaciations shifted from relatively low-amplitude 40,000 year cycles to much higher amplitude 100,000 year cycles (“the Mid-Pleistocene turn-over”).
Not much since then, though the tree flora in Europe typically loses one or two species each glaciation. We don’t have very many tree species left by now, compared to North America or East Asia..
Here is an interesting paper on climate variability on oceanic islands written back in 1992, before CAGW became hip. It notes that this part of the Indian ocean has very variable rainfall and recurring drought periods (for example in 1949 Aldabra only got 41 mm of pecipitation in a 6 month period):
http://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/atollresearchbulletin/issues/00356.pdf
It would thus seem likely that organisms living there can’t be very sensitive to drought.
Can you tell us more about this? I’d want to find out some additional information.
This looks like a spam address….same kind of spam I get at one of my blogs…
It’s actually at the Smithsonian Institution. I don’t think they are very big in the spam business.
“Conservationists are celebrating the banded snail’s reemergence.”
Shouldn’t that be ‘resurrection’? After all, we were told they were ‘extinct’ and AGW killed them…..
The folks who perpetrated this fr@ud should be forced to return all funds associated with it…. but you’d never be able to collect it. They would just repeat the age old evasion
“The checks in the snail mail now!”
Durn critters keep refusing to read the memos ordering them to report for census.
(How the heck can people be confident there aren’t any of a small thing living in mud?)
The analogy to penicillin is glib.
I’ll take mine with hot butter, and be sure to include one of those little spoons to pop it out of the shell
I propose an experiment. Maybe just a thought experiment but it’s interesting nonetheless. Some people think a species extinction is a tragedy beyond price. Let’s find out.
I will make a new snail species if I can get a government grant. What will the feds pay for a new snail species? My guess – not much.
It shouldn’t be hard. I take some snails and I divide the colony into two parts. One I feed and water well and the other I starve. After a couple generations I should have two snails – fat ones and thin ones. If they can’t interbreed, I have created a new species. Dog breeders have been doing stuff like this for millennia although they try to avoid fertility isolation.
If I got two mutually infertile strains of snail what would be the payoff? None actually. No one needs another snail species. So why is it so terrible when we think we’ve lost a snail species? We can always make more.
http://www.thegwpf.com/royal-society-in-trouble-over-false-extinction-claim-paper/
“However, the Royal Society admitted this week, after questions from The Times, that the referees who had rejected the rebuttal were the same referees who had approved Mr Gerlach’s paper for publication”