List of extinct animals of the British Isles

This is a list of extinct animals of the British Isles. Only a small number of these are globally extinct, most famously the Irish elk, great auk and woolly mammoth. Most of the remainder survive to some extent outside the islands. The list includes introduced species only where they were able to form self-sustaining colonies for a time. Only species extinct since Great Britain was separated from mainland Europe are included. The date beside each species is the last date when a specimen was observed in the wild, or where this is not known, the approximate date of extinction. The list is complete for mammals, reptiles, freshwater fish and amphibians.

Extinct species

Mammals[1]

Birds

Fish

Amphibians

Reptiles

Insects

Beetles

Bees, wasps and ants

Flies

Butterflies and moths

General reference: Waring et al., 2009.[5]

Dragonflies and damselflies

Caddisflies

Crustaceans

Molluscs

Land snails

† - Species is extinct worldwide

Reintroduction and re-establishment

The white-tailed eagle has been successfully re-established on the west coast of Scotland. Red kite and osprey have been successfully re-established in parts of England and Scotland. Ongoing projects involve both these species; corncrake into parts of England and Scotland; great bustard on Salisbury Plain.

European beaver have been reintroduced to parts of Scotland, and there are plans to bring them back to other parts of Britain. A five-year trial reintroduction at Knapdale in Argyll started in 2009.[10] and a few hundred are believed to live wild in the Tay river basin, as a result of escapes from a wildlife park.[11] In 2008, Moose were released into a fenced reserve on the Alladale Estate in the Highlands of Scotland. Reindeer were re-established in 1952, approximately 150-170 reindeer living around the Cairngorms region in Scotland.

The northern clade pool frog was reintroduced from Swedish stock in 2005, to a single site in Norfolk, England, following detailed research to prove that it had been native prior to its extinction around 1993.

The large blue butterfly has been successfully re-established from Swedish stock at a number of sites, but few of these are open-access. There are also several successful cases of the establishment of new populations of heath fritillary.

Lynx and grey wolf are very close to being reintroduced to England, along with plans to reintroduce the brown bear.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Yalden, Derek (1999), History of British Mammals, London: T. & A.D. Poyser Ltd., ISBN 0-85661-110-7
  2. ↑ Bumblebee superfacts, BugLife, retrieved January 23, 2013
  3. ↑ Bumblebee superfacts, BugLife, retrieved January 23, 2013
  4. ↑ Bumblebee superfacts, BugLife, retrieved January 23, 2013
  5. ↑ Waring, P. et al. (2009), Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland, Hook, Hampshire: British Wildlife Publishing, ISBN 0953139999 ; UK Moths (Ian Kimber) http://ukmoths.org.uk/, retrieved January 23, 2013 Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. ↑ Tilbury, Christine (March 2007), Gypsy Moth Advisory Note (PDF), Forest Research: Tree Health Division, retrieved 6 February 2014
  7. ↑ "Viper's Bugloss Hadena irregularis - UK Moths", UK Moths (Ian Kimber), retrieved January 23, 2013
  8. ↑ Gilbert Van Stappen (1996), "Artemia", in Patrick Lavens & Patrick Sorgeloos, Manual on the Production and Use of Live Food for Aquaculture, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 361, Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, pp. 79–106, ISBN 978-92-5-103934-2
  9. ↑ Geoffrey Fryer (2006), "The brine shrimp's tale: a topsy turvy evolutionary fable" (PDF), Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 88 (3): 377–382, doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2006.00623.x
  10. ↑ http://www.scottishbeavers.org.uk/
  11. ↑ http://scottishwildbeavers.org/about-tay-beavers/

Further reading