If you could have prevented one North American animal from the past 200 years from going extinct, what would you choose?

26 comments

1. The Sex Panther

2. The Oakland As fan.

3. Big Foot

4. The Cascade Mountain wolf.

5. Either the Eastern Elk or the Great Auk

6. The Carolina Parakeet.

   It had beautiful plumage, and it’d be cool to have a native parrot.

7. Not extinct, but I would have prevented the wolf and mountain lion from being all but extirpated from the eastern US. Ok, that’s two animals…

8. Passenger pigeon

9. California grizzly

   Passenger pigeon in second place.

10. Passenger pigeon

11. Ivory-billed woodpecker

12. Flamingos in Florida

13. Bison. Yeah I know, not extinct but they may as well be. Imagine millions of those bastards roaming the plains still.

14. The Passenger Pidgeon.

15. From what was written in the history books it would have to be the passenger pigeon.

    Supposedly its migrations would blot out the sun.

    “They were called ‘passenger’ pigeons from the French term ‘passenger’ or ‘passing by’, as their great flocks were said to darken the skies and blot out the sun when passing overhead. Their numbers seemed boundless, yet the species was on the verge of annihilation.”

16. The California bear – it went extinct in the 1920s.

17. I wish I could see the massive clouds of passenger pigeons. I wish to have seen them as they reportedly blocked out the sun [https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/wX2weiHam3aaGRuJgsVGvSQg3mmrvewWt2iUHl_Iev-rXRkd3_NbqtbdNJVPhm0IPXG_pWq5FGKbdLnrFS1kM1IinHXkIptHuRNgmx7m1NO2E4Xee94fhiHGyBrflVI4o46mugxQ](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/wX2weiHam3aaGRuJgsVGvSQg3mmrvewWt2iUHl_Iev-rXRkd3_NbqtbdNJVPhm0IPXG_pWq5FGKbdLnrFS1kM1IinHXkIptHuRNgmx7m1NO2E4Xee94fhiHGyBrflVI4o46mugxQ)

18. The imperial woodpecker. I saw one of its living relatives, the pleated woodpecker in my back yard and it was amazing.

    So I want to see one of the even bigger and more majestic versions.

19. American Snipe

20. Ruth Bader Ginsburg

21. Since ’tis the season, the heath hen, which is possibly what they actually ate during the first Thanksgiving instead of Turkey.

22. Slightly over 200 years, but I would bring back the Steller’s Sea Cow

23. The one eyed trouser snake

24. Literally anything that is in Red Dead redemption that is extinct or in danger today

25. The Kaua’i ‘ō ‘ō

    There was a male left at the end and his song was recorded, there are gaps in it waiting for the return song of another bird who no longer existed. It’s incredibly sad and his half of the song was beautiful, Id love to hear the full song as it was meant to be.

26. Carolina Parakeet