Are they for real? “Why did the Tasmanian tiger go extinct?” asks the headline of this linked article. And again I must ask, are they serious? We know exactly why. It’s a simple, one-word answer. Why did the Tasmanian tiger go extinct? Us. That’s why. Who killed the thylacine? We did. Human beings. When I say “we” I don’t mean you, who are reading this article, or me. We weren’t around back then, and thus cannot be blamed for what was done. I mean “we” in the sense that you and I are humans—for the most part—and it was humans who drove the thylacine to extinction. Anything beyond that is a case of specifics and semantics.
From the linked article: “The government bounty [placed upon thylacines] may seem to be the obvious extinction culprit. [Ya think?] But growing scientific evidence reveals a complex tapestry of forces involved in their decline. Among these are competition with dogs, habitat loss and changing fire regimes leading to population fragmentation, and an epidemic disease that spread through the population in the 1920s.” Yeah, maybe, but everything excepting the disease (and possibly even that) is 100% the fault of human beings. There’s no letting our species off the hook for this one.
