Studies of extinction typically focus on unintended losses of biodiversity and culture. This study, however, examines an attempt to induce extinction of a parasite: human hookworm (Necator americanus and Ancylostoma duodenale). Our interdisciplinary approach integrates medical history and epidemiology using records created by the Jamaica Hookworm Commission of 1919–1936. We show that the attempt to induce the extinction of hookworms was driven by its perceived effects on labour productivity and consequent status as an ideological and economic threat. We use spatial epidemiology to describe the relationships between parasites, environments and the working conditions of plantation labourers. Using data from 330 locations across Jamaica in which 169,380 individuals were tested for hookworm infection we show that the prevalence of hookworm infection was higher in districts surrounding plantations. Prevalence decreased with the temperature of the coldest month, increased with the amount of rainfall in the driest month, and increased with vegetation quantity (normalised difference vegetation index). Worm burden (and thus pathology) varied greatly between individuals, even those living together; hookworm infection varied between environments, socioeconomic conditions and individuals. Nevertheless, the conditions of labour shaped the distribution of hookworms. Plantations both spread and problematised hookworms, driving efforts to bring it to extinction.

The Namibian Swakara industry, a type of sheep farming focused on the production of lamb pelts for the fashion industry, currently faces a crisis situation. Formerly one of the most important export products from Namibia, a combination of drought, falling pelt prices and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic now threaten the survival of Swakara, the Namibian Karakul. The current crisis is articulated in extinction narratives. The potential end of Swakara farming as a way of life and a set of knowledge practices is narratively interwoven with the potential disappearance of Swakara from the Namibian landscape. Extinction narratives in the context of Swakara farming in Namibia blur the lines of human and nonhuman ways of life and their disappearance.

Through compositional inclusion or exclusion, the photograph can assert and communicate what belongs in a picture, in a landscape, in an ecosystem. It can illuminate what we deem conservation-worthy, or, on a larger scale, which extinctions are attention-worthy. Photographic practice helps to illuminate the active nature of extinction, and our choices as actors and witnesses within that process. Here, researchers from the University of Leeds’ Extinction Studies Doctoral Training Programme present individual reflections on interdisciplinary practice-led research in the Scottish Small Isles. We consider how photography, as a form of praxis, can generate new forms of knowledge surrounding extinction: its meanings, representations, and legacies, particularly through visual representation. We offer seven perspectives on contemporary image-making, from disciplines including philosophy, conservation biology, literature, sociology, geology, cultural anthropology, and palaeontology. Researchers gathered experiential, ethical, even biological meanings from considering what to include or exclude in images: from the micro to the macro, the visible to the invisible, the aesthetic to the ecological. We draw conclusions around meaning-making through the process of photography itself, and the tensions encountered through framing and decision-making in a time of mass ecological decline.

This article discusses Estonian author Andrus Kivirähk’s novel The Man Who Spoke Snakish in the context of language extinction and biocultural diversity. The novel is set in Medieval Estonia, but the viewpoint of the protagonist as a speaker of a vanishing language from a vanishing culture resonates with the lived experience of millions of people who have lost lifeways and livelihoods to colonisation and cultural assimilation. The fictitious language of Snakish allows its speakers to integrate fully into the natural world and to form complex interdependent relationships with non-human animals. This web of nature, culture and language is destroyed by a colonising society that is anthropocentric, ecologically destructive and socially hierarchical, and which views nature as something to exploit or fear. The novel explores the emotions of grief and loss for both a culture and an ecosystem heading for extinction.

Among the stories on individual examples of charismatic fauna, there are also extinction stories that evoke databases and their aesthetics in how they list endangered species. At the same time, these different stories grapple with a legacy of taxonomy that, while necessary in conservation, also carries a history of exclusion. This paper turns to the poetry of Claire Wahmanholm and Juliana Spahr to consider some of the ways extinction stories can be told outside of the relatively narrow scope of charismatic species. To begin, I reflect on extinction storytelling and the classificatory impulse in some of these stories, including poetry. Then, I consider scientific practices of naming before I turn back to Wahmanholm and Spahr and explore practices of naming and classification in their poetry. Following that, I dwell on the influence of scientific classification on the ways people including poets can engage with extinction. The poems in this paper are not merely an object for analysis; they should be considered an invitation to come to terms with and move beyond complicated histories and practices of naming and classification in storytelling.

This perspective article takes up the challenge of articulating a political epistemology for extinction studies, centered around how both the systematic-scientific and mythopoetic traditions conceive of the idea of preservation. Political epistemology offers a solution to this for impasse because it asks the question of the social orientation or “end” of knowledge formations, thereby questioning what the larger goal of preservation might be. By focusing on the example of the thylacine, I outline one strand of what a political epistemology for contemporary justifications of preservation in the Museum might look like. Then I discuss how the mode of storytelling in extinction studies also conceives of preservation. Finally, I introduce the idea of replenishment as contrary to the preservation, focused on the cultural practices of Indigenous peoples in North East Arnhem Land, and ask whether new developments in the techno-scientific tradition will begin to turn to replenishment as well.

In its nearly 80-year history, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has shifted from a “whalers club” to an international governance body chiefly focused on the protection and conservation of global cetacean populations. Drawing on recent scholarship on extinction and its entanglements, this article compares two addresses given by whalers at IWC meetings 40 years apart to problematise the way whaling and its relation to extinction is conceptualised in international environmental governance. Guided by practice-oriented document analysis and recent theorisation of extinction as an entangled process, this article analyses the personal stakeholder testimonies from two different representatives of the North Slope whalers of Northern Alaska to the IWC – one in relation to the 1977 Alaska bowhead whaling controversy and the other in the context of the 2018 negotiations over streamlining Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling management and supporting greater flexibility and Indigenous autonomy. By comparing these two statements from very different points of history for the IWC and the governance of Indigenous whaling, this article illustrates some of the ongoing struggles for environmental governance to recognise extinction as a complex, multifaceted process that reverberates throughout human and more-than-human communities.

The Scottish Small Isles – comprising Muck, Rùm, Eigg, Canna, and by extension, Coll – are geologically complex, with intersecting rock samples from the Archean (Lewisian Gneiss basements formed approximately 3 billion years ago), Proterozoic (Torridonian sandstone formed approximately 1 billion years ago), Mesozoic (sedimentation deposited approximately 200 million years ago) and Palaeocene (basalt formed approximately 55.8 million years ago as part of the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum event). This practice research article – drawing on palaeontology, kinaesthetic learning and creative writing – takes the Small Isles as a case study for what geologist Marcia Bjornerud defines as a discernible “timefulness” that humans should seek to attain: “an acute consciousness of how the world is made by–indeed, made of–time” (2020, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, 5). Through their lithic intrusions, and interruptive strata, the Small Isles offer an alternative form of pedagogy: where multiple epochs, tenses and tempos visibly converse with one another; where “polytemporality” can be witnessed and physically experienced; where the notion of linear time is destabilised.

Different stakeholders and actors frequently describe environmental challenges as ‘crises’. These crises are often wicked problems that are difficult to resolve due to the complex and contradictory nature of the evidence and knowledge systems surrounding them. Here, we examine a crisis narrative surrounding the IUCN-declared Asian Songbird Crisis (ASC), with its epicentre in Indonesia, where an extensive birdkeeping culture persists. We investigate how bird extinction is perceived by different actors, particularly conservation law enforcement and practitioners working in this space. We unravel local perspectives on the complex relationship between bird trade and extinction through one-to-one interviews and focus groups. Our examination reveals a diversity of attitudes to the ASC, with many law enforcement actors not recognising the crisis label. Market mechanisms result in complex shifts in harvesting pressure onto one or more closely related similar species. The findings challenge the prevailing notion that species extinction significantly affects wildlife trades, emphasising the plastic nature of trade and the coming and going of species fashions. By revealing the divergent views of actors on extinction and the ASC, we highlight the need for shared language, particularly the implications of the ‘crisis’ label, around species extinction.

In 2021, scientists published a preprint stating that the dugong population of Okinawa had declined below the minimum viable population and should be considered extinct. The publication led to an outcry amongst Japanese/Okinawan environmentalists and to criticism by international dugong specialists. Two issues were raised: 1) Declaring dugongs extinct, although feeding trails were found in several locations, misrepresented the reality in Okinawan waters, and could have negative impacts on conservation measures; 2) Three authors were sitting on the Environmental Monitoring Committee for a controversial military base construction project in an area where dugongs were frequently spotted before construction commenced. The presence/absence of dugongs at the site had become a political issue, as the animal’s protected status and its depiction in folklore gave it symbolic meaning in the anti-base movement. The declaration of dugong extinction reminded protesters of a former Environmental Impact Assessment conducted by Japan’s Ministry of Defence, declaring the site to be no relevant dugong habitat. The paper explores the implications of the preprint for the political situation in Okinawa and questions the certainty of dugong extirpation in the region. It argues that speculations about extinction cannot be divorced from the political contexts to which they are invariably tied.

Biodiversity shortfalls and taxonomic bias can lead to inaccurate assessment of conservation priorities. Previous literature has begun to explore practical reasons why some species are discovered sooner or are better researched than others. However, the deeper socio-cultural causes for undiscovered and neglected biodiversity, and the value of collectively analysing species at risk of unrecorded, or “dark”, extinction, are yet to be fully examined. Here, we argue that a new label (we propose “shadow diversity”) is needed to shift our perspective from biodiversity shortfalls to living, albeit unknown, species. We suggest this linguistic shift imparts intrinsic value to these species, beyond scientific gaze and cultural systems. We review research on undiscovered, undetected and hidden biodiversity in the fields of conservation biology, macroecology and genetics. Drawing on philosophy, geography, history and sociology, we demonstrate that a range of socio-cultural factors (funding, education and historical bias) combine with traditional, practical impediments to limit species discovery and detection. We propose using a spectrum of shadow diversity which enables a complex, non-binary and comprehensive approach to biodiversity unknowns. Shadow diversity holds exciting potential as a tool to increase awareness, appreciation and support for the conservation of traditionally less studied wildlife species and sites, from soil microbes to less charismatic habitat fragments. We advocate for a shift in how the conservation community and wider public see biodiversity and an increase in popular support for conserving a wider range of life forms. Most importantly, shadow diversity provides appropriate language and conceptual frameworks to discuss species absent from conservation assessment and at potential risk of dark extinction.