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He associates the great auk with the mythical roc as a method of formally returning the main character to a sleepy land of fantasy and memory. [71] W. S. Merwin mentions the great auk in a short litany of extinct animals in his poem "For a Coming Extinction", one of the poems from his 1967 collection, "The Lice". [72]
The great auk went extinct in the 1800s due to overhunting by humans for food. The last two known great auks lived on an island near Iceland and were clubbed to death by sailors. There have been no known sightings since. [95] The great auk has been identified as a good candidate for de-extinction by Revive and Restore, a non-profit organization.
Pinguinus alfrednewtoni is an extinct species of auk related to the great auk known from fossils that were discovered in the Pliocene Yorktown Formation of North Carolina.Like the great auk, it was a large flightless diving bird that used its wings to propel itself forward underwater.
A five-year trial reintroduction at Knapdale in Argyll started in 2009 and concluded in 2014. [72] A few hundred beavers live wild in the Tay river basin, as a result of escapes from a wildlife park. [73] A similar reintroduction trial is being undertaken on the river otter in Devon, England. [74]
The great auk (or, as it has been nicknamed, the "Penguin of the North") was a flightless marine bird that inhabited the North Atlantic Ocean and its nearby islands. Its range once extended to the continental United States and Europe. [ 21 ]
Captive breeding, or ex-situ conservation, has been used in a number of instances to save species from extinction. The principle is to create a viable population of a species in either zoos or breeding facilities, for later reintroduction back into the wild. As such a captive population can either serve as an insurance against the species going ...
' Great Auk Stack '), [2] or Freykja (), [citation needed] is a small, uninhabited island in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. [1] [2] Geirfuglasker is located approximately 30 kilometres (19 mi) off Iceland's southwestern coast. [1] [2] The island hosted one of the last known colony of great auks, which thrived given its inaccessibility to humans.
The definitive successful reintroduction in Dovre was made in 1947. [84] In 1971 a herd left Dovre after being harassed by tourists and established itself in Harjedalen , Sweden. Norwegians also introduced muskoxen to Svalbard in 1929, outside of the muskox's natural range, but this population died out by the 1970s.