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How Photos Can Save Endangered Species
Joel Sartore discusses his Audubon cover shot of the imperiled Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, and how that helped the bird survive.
Thanks to human-caused environmental destruction, more species are being lost now than at any time since the dinosaurs were wiped out some 66 million years ago. Today, on Endangered Species Day, we’d like to (again) highlight the very important work photographer Joel Sartore is doing to raise awareness on this issue.
Sartore is currently in the midst of a two-decades-long quest to snap portraits of every captive species on Earth, a project he’s dubbed the “Photo Ark.” The goal, he says, is to get people to care enough to save them before it’s too late. To learn more, read our March-April magazine feature on the project, and check out some of the photos in our interactive grid. (Plus, here’s the magazine issue on which Sartore’s Grasshopper Sparrow appeared.)
“A lot of times these pictures I do are the only national coverage these animals will ever get before they go extinct,” he tells the Academy Award-winning filmmakers behind the new documentary, Racing Extinction. “This is it—their one chance.”
Here are some more stats about extinct and imperiled species worldwide:
832: The number of known species that have gone extinct worldwide since the year 1500, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which keeps the most definitive list on the subject. An additional 69 species, including the Hawaiian Crow, are extinct in the wild (but still exist in captivity).
140: The number of extinct birds reported by the IUCN.
22,413: The number of species that the IUCN lists as threatened with extinction. Over half are considered “critically endangered” or “endangered.”
1,373: The number of bird species, or 13 percent of the worldwide total, that the IUCN lists as threatened with extinction.
9: North American birds believed to be extinct: Labrador Duck, Heath Hen, Eskimo Curlew, Great Auk, Passenger Pigeon, Carolina Parakeet, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Bachman’s Warbler, and Dusky Seaside Sparrow.
27,000: Famed ecologist E.O. Wilson thinks this many species may be going extinct each year without our knowledge (think small bugs and microbes). Some scientists dispute this.
1,000: How many times higher current extinction rates are than natural background rates of extinction, according to a paper published last year in the journal Conservation Biology.
10,000: How many times higher future extinction rates are likely to be, according to the same paper.
Want to help endangered species? Take action to protect the Endangered Species Act.
About Racing Extinction: Oscar®-winning director Louie Psihoyos (THE COVE) assembles a team of artists and activists on an undercover operation to expose the hidden world of endangered species and the race to protect them against mass extinction. Spanning the globe to infiltrate the world’s most dangerous black markets and using high tech tactics to document the link between carbon emissions and species extinction, RACING EXTINCTION reveals stunning, never-before seen images that truly change the way we see the world. RACING EXTINCTION will premiere in theaters this fall. For more great stories, opportunities to take action and film updates, following Racing Extinction at: https://www.facebook.com/racingextinction and https://twitter.com/Extinction_OPS.