Pyrenean Ibex Extinct
circa 2000 CE • Pyrenees in France and Spain
"The distribution of this subspecies of Iberian Ibex was limited to the French and Spanish Pyrenees. Its first mention in an official written document, dating back to 1767, already refers to it as extremely rare. Like many other mountain goats, it was almost hunted to extinction before its killing became prohibited in 1913 . . . Neither the institution of a national park . . . nor a conservation project . . . could stop the extinction of the Pyrenean Ibex eventually officialised on January 6, 2000."
Giovanni Forcina, et al., "Demography reveals populational expansion of a recently extinct Iberian ungulate," Zoosystematics and Evolution, 2021; 97 (1): 211, in "What can we learn from vanishing wildlife species: The case of the Pyrenean Ibex," Science Daily, April 6, 2021.
Image: Tambako The Jaguar via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic
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