AH Challenge: Prevent an Extinction

Ran Exilis · Apr 30, 2007

Quite simple: create a scenario in which the POD results in the survival of a species
(this can be any kind of species, wether it's a plant, animal or fungus doesn't matter) that is currently declared extinct in OTL.

The POD can be before or after 1900.

The only limit is that making humanity go extinct or preventing the rise of human civilisations is not an option.

Michael B · Apr 30, 2007

An obvious one) North American horses are a lot more flightly so don't become victims of the megafauna slaughter at the end of the last Ice Age.

Aozhouhuaren · Apr 30, 2007

How would the extinction of the Dodo be prevented even with the colonisation of Mauritius?

stevep · Apr 30, 2007

Aozhouhuaren said:
How would the extinction of the Dodo be prevented even with the colonisation of Mauritius?

I don't think the problem was the colonisation but that they were preyed upon by passing sailors. Possibly an earlier settlement might save them in that they could be seen as a useful sustainable food source. Rather than somewhere every passing ship kills as many as possible of for fresh food because they have no incentive to maintain a population. The old problem of the tragedy of the commons.

Steve

Ran Exilis · Apr 30, 2007

stevep said:
I don't think the problem was the colonisation but that they were preyed upon by passing sailors. Possibly an earlier settlement might save them in that they could be seen as a useful sustainable food source. Rather than somewhere every passing ship kills as many as possible of for fresh food because they have no incentive to maintain a population. The old problem of the tragedy of the commons.

Steve

Actually, the theory that hungry sailors hunted the dodo to extinction has now been discarded by most scientists.

More recent studies show that it was most propably the predation that the dodo's, and especially their eggs and young dodo's suffered from the rats and pigs that the European colonists had introduced on Mauritius.

The Sandman · Apr 30, 2007

Since it seems to have somehow become my thing...domesticated moa!

Tom Veil · Apr 30, 2007

Ran Exilis said:
Actually, the theory that hungry sailors hunted the dodo to extinction has now been discarded by most scientists.

More recent studies show that it was most propably the predation that the dodo's, and especially their eggs and young dodo's suffered from the rats and pigs that the European colonists had introduced on Mauritius.

I've heard this too -- apparently from the sailor's journals, it's clear that dodo tasted awful and that once sailors could afford to get another source of protein, they did so immediately.

Cockroach · Apr 30, 2007

I'm certain there could be a fairly simple PoD to save the Thylacine. Probably just a matter of getting the decleration of it being an endangered species to happen in the mid 1920s rather than the mid-1930s (after the last know example died).

Cherico · May 1, 2007

All you need to save the dodo is to have a fad where the early
Zoos decide to have them in their zoos and then later have
them domesticated for food.

Riain · May 1, 2007

Govt abandoning the bounty and protecting the Thylacine from 1900.

1940LaSalle · May 1, 2007

Had the major powers of Europe been of a mind to do so, the quagga could have been protected when Africa was carved up at Berlin in 1885: it would have been just barely in time to save the species, but ostensibly enough specimens could have been saved on a couple of preserves to keep it alive and rebuild the numbers sufficient to allow repopulation.

To stave off extinction of the passenger pigeon, I suspect it would have taken something along the lines of a proclamation from Gifford Pinchot with Theodore Roosevelt's backing at the least, but it might well have been too late even then: the last passenger pigeon shot in the wild was taken in Ohio in 1900. Maybe an all-out effort to find specimens and bring them to one point (the Cincinnati Zoo was the home of the last specimen, which died in 1914) for breeding might do it.

Ofaloaf · May 1, 2007

I'm certain the passenger pigeon could be saved somehow. Birds on hats never come into fashion, perhaps?

stevep · May 1, 2007

Ran Exilis said:
Actually, the theory that hungry sailors hunted the dodo to extinction has now been discarded by most scientists.

More recent studies show that it was most propably the predation that the dodo's, and especially their eggs and young dodo's suffered from the rats and pigs that the European colonists had introduced on Mauritius.

Ran

Thanks. That makes more sense given the devastation rats caused in so many places to ground nesting birds. Does make it a lot more difficult for the Dodo through.

Steve

Michael B · May 1, 2007

1940LaSalle said:
Had the major powers of Europe been of a mind to do so, the quagga could have been protected when Africa was carved up at Berlin in 1885: it would have been just barely in time to save the species, but ostensibly enough specimens could have been saved on a couple of preserves to keep it alive and rebuild the numbers sufficient to allow repopulation.

Compared with other types of zebra, it was unlucky to only live in areas whether Europeans were colonising. Had it also lived in say East Africa as well it may have survived.

Aozhouhuaren · May 1, 2007

Ofaloaf said:
I'm certain the passenger pigeon could be saved somehow. Birds on hats never come into fashion, perhaps?

I'm still boggled as to how birds that numbered in the billions and had no specific habitat that it required to breed and live in, could be driven to extinction? This was a bird whose numbers were so profuse that they were reported to blot out the sun and cause temporary darkness for minutes at a time.

It just shows you the power of the human race.

Paul Spring · May 1, 2007

Aozhouhuaren said:
I'm still boggled as to how birds that numbered in the billions and had no specific habitat that it required to breed and live in, could be driven to extinction? This was a bird whose numbers were so profuse that they were reported to blot out the sun and cause temporary darkness for minutes at a time. It just shows you the power of the human race.

Passenger pigeons did have a specific habitat - deciduous forest. Unlike a lot of other birds in the pigeon family, they avoided cleared fields and towns, living in the deep woods. At the same time as hunting of pigeons was accelerated in the 19th century, vast tracts of deciduous forests in the eastern US and Canada were being cleared for farming. I think that some ecologists have suggested that loss of habitat was an even bigger factor than over-hunting in the extinction of the passenger pigeon.

Faeelin · May 1, 2007

How about saving the habitat, then?

Maybe in Wisconsin?

Aozhouhuaren · May 1, 2007

Riain said:
Govt abandoning the bounty and protecting the Thylacine from 1900.

Do you think the rumours are true, that there are small isolated pockets of thylacines out there somewhere in the Tasmanian wilderness? I think we should focus on finding a vaccine or at least treatment for the devastating face cancer that sets to wipe out the Tasmanian Devil. I don't what that extinction to be discussed here in the future.

Its the only link left to the Tasmanian Tiger.

Riain · May 1, 2007

I hope the rumours are true, I've read stories about a female denning in a farms' boiler room in the '60s. Maybe cloning will bring them back, that would be a good purpose for cloning. I once read that the passenger pigeon was rare until 1492, there is little evidence of them in Indian rubbish middens, even thought they ate nutmast and Indians would have killed them to reduce the competition. Apparently with the disease decimation of the Indians the lack of firestick farming allowed the passenger pigeon numbers to balloon in a manner unprecedneted for this bird.

CalBear · May 1, 2007

Easy. Get the back country Imans in Nigeria and the other regions where they are currently blocking vaccinations on rather odd quasi-religious grounds to go into business earlier. That keeps us from killing off smallpox.