Skip to footer

14 animals declared extinct in the 21st century

In spite of US and international legislation, humans continues to cause extinctions of species worldwide.

2. Eastern Cougar, Puma concolor couguar, 2015

National Park Service/AP/File
A remote camera in the Santa Monica Mountains spotted this female western cougar in February 2015, one of several observed in and near urbanized areas in greater Los Angeles. The mountains are ringed by dense urban areas, making roaming difficult for animals. At least a dozen have been killed by traffic in the area since 2002.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) began a formal review of the eastern cougar in 2011, 36 years after it was first classified as endangered. 

The eastern subspecies, known variously as ghost cat, catamount, puma, painter, panther, mountain lion, and cougar, originally hunted from southern Canada to the tip of South America. Once the most widely distributed land mammal in the Western hemisphere, cougars have been eliminated from about two-thirds of their original range. 

Two other subspecies, western cougars and Florida panthers, still maintain breeding populations. 

The USFWS concluded in 2011 that there was no evidence of the eastern cougar living within its once enormous habitat. Experts suggest the cougars’ decline began when European immigrants starting killing the animals to protect their families and livestock.

Although the eastern cougar has been declared extinct, the Florida and western subspecies populations have grown in recent decades, and some are expanding their range into their extinct cousins' terrain.

"Many people have seen cougars in the wild within the historical range of the eastern cougar," said Martin Miller, the northeast regional chief of endangered species for the USFWS, in 2011. "However, we believe those cougars are not the eastern cougar subspecies. We found no information to support the existence of the eastern cougar."

2 of 14
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.