The IUCN declared it extinct in 2017. Like Darwin’s famous finches, these birds evolved a variety of bill shapes and feeding behaviours, filling niches corresponding with Hawaii’s incredibly diverse plant population via adaptive radiation. Two flowering shrubs in the Delissea genus lived in the lowland Hawaiian forests, and likely went extinct due to competition with invasive plants and animals introduced to the islands. Ricki the ice cream bear on journey to become ... herself: Coyotes are a great addition to any big city—just ask Chicago and New York. But this spring, called Ojo Solo, is also at risk of drying up. The IUCN declared it extinct in 2017. This small, rare shrub only inhabited forested areas of the island of Rarotunga in the South Pacific. The large rocks under witch the earwigs lived were mostly removed for construction, and humans introduced invasive predators like spiders and centipedes, threatening the earwig. The IUCN declared it extinct in 2014. Intense surveys have failed to turn up the plant since 1980, and the IUCN declared it extinct in 2012. Then Lonesome George was sighted in 1971 and transported to the Santa Cruz Tortoise Center in 1972. Naturalists did not find any other Pinta Island tortoises, despite intensive searches, and the IUCN declared the Pinta Island tortoise extinct in the wild in 1996. This freshwater fish lived in a single lake in Turkey, Lake EÄŸirdir. Invasive plants destroyed its native habitat, and the IUCN declared it extinct in 2014. This freshwater mussel lived in the Coosa and Conasauga Rivers, part of Mississippi and Alabama’s Mobile River Basin, scientists have not seen it since the early 20th century despite extensive searches. The IUCN declared it extinct in 2016, though some questions remain as to whether it was simply a variant of another, similar species of lizard all along. This one lived on O’ahu. Pinta Island tortoises go extinct with Lonesome George’s passing. The effects of habitat destruction on Mahé probably did it in, and the IUCN declared it extinct in 2014. Botanists taking too many for their collections and quarrying of the limestone likely led to its end. Again, there is no clear cause for this extinction event but it is believed that global climate change was again the culprit, though due to a warming this time. This annual flowering plant lived on both the North and South Island of New Zealand, along lakes and rivers. The IUCN declared it extinct in 2017. A small lizard representing this species was once found on a granite outcrop in the Uruguayan coastal town of Cabo Polonio. However, assessors returned the species’ status to extinct in 2016. The invasive Polynesian rat and hunting from humans settlers likely drove the bird to extinction, and the IUCN declared it extinct in 2014. 
This partially parasitic shrub lived at forest edges and only on New Zealand’s North Island, but scientists haven’t observed it since 1954. Angraecopsis dolabriformis is a small flowering plant known only from a single specimen, taken from the island of São Tomé off the Atlantic Coast of Central Africa in 1892. Various factors combined likely led to this bird’s extinction. Two other nukupu’u species, one on Maui and one on Kaua’i, lived into the late 20th century”but neither has been seen since 1998. Rampant introduction of feral mammals probably removed it from the North Island before naturalists began keeping written records, which led to the species’ ultimate demise on Little Barrier Island as well. A 2010 IUCN assessment declared eight members of the Pseudamnicola desert snail genus extinct in 2010, after surveys failed to turn any of them up. A volcanic eruption on the island 1,450 years ago probably killed the last of them, and the IUCN officially declared it extinct in 2017. As you might be able to tell so far, climate has a huge effect on life. This mollusk is only known from 19th-century records from a thermal spring that doesn’t exist anymore. The IUCN implicates destruction of the marsh habitat it spawned in at the north side of the lake as the likely culprit”and this destruction came as the result of water use drying out the area. Scientists know this plant from a single specimen taken from the Seychelles island of Desroches, where it was last recorded in 1905. It is called the Holocene extinction and it’s happening right now. The last known member of the Pinta Island tortoise subspecies (Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii) died on June 24, 2012.Known as "Lonesome George" by his keepers at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the Galápagos Island of Santa Cruz, this giant tortoise was estimated to be 100 years old. A small yellow bird with a bright eye-ring lived across the Northern Mariana Islands in various habitats, even in urban areas. Farmers converted marshes into rice fields, and it began to hybridize with the little grebe, which colonised Madagascar from Africa. Lonesome George, a giant tortoise which became an icon for conservation on the Galapagos islands, has died, making its subspecies extinct. The IUCN’s Red List names only a thousand extinct or extinct-in-the-wild species”but one paper estimated that 7 per cent of the known extant species might be extinct, if you include estimates of invertebrate extinctions. Scientists found this intricately-shelled snail in just one limestone hill in Malaysia. An iguana once lived on the small, barren Navassa island in the Caribbean. This daddy longlegs-like spider once inhabited the Seychelles island of Mahé and was last recorded by naturalists in 1908. Those found during the latest expedition were hybrids descended from both the extinct and other species. What caused this die off? Barry, who was at the Santa Cruz Island station that Lonesome George called home when the beloved tortoise died, said the discovery of a surviving relative could be “a story of hope” for conservationists. The Nevis Rice Rat lived on the Caribbean islands of Saint Kitts, Nevis, and Saint Eustatius, and was once a major component of the native peoples’ diet. These snails were extremely sensitive to changes to the springs they inhabited”no water, no snails. The cause of this bat’s extinction is still a mystery, since as much as 75% of the island’s native forests remained after humans arrived. A round, long-beaked brown bird called a snipe lived on New Zealand’s Little Barrier Island and was last seen in 1870. Scientists last saw it in 1894, and it likely went extinct due to invasive plants changing its native habitats. During the 2000s, a cement company wiped the hill off the map for its valuable resources, rendering the “microjewel” snail extinct. This shrub lived in valleys on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, but scientists haven’t observed any since 1897. Scientists working in the Australian desert have collected only a single specimen of the desert bettong, which looked like a cross between a rat and a kangaroo, so we know little about where or how it lived. Scientists have only ever collected one of these freshwater shrimp, from Java, Indonesia in 1888. Tecca, Technology News Blog • June 26, 2012. This perennial herb lived on steep grassy slopes on Kaua’i. Though they’re not crowdpleasers, these endemic plants and animals serve important purposes in their environment”what biologists call ecosystem services.