The Mangrove Finch: An Extinction in Slow Motion

By John R. Platt | Scientific American

One of Charles Darwin’s fabled finch species is slowly disappearing, even as conservationists work desperately to save it.

This “slow-motion extinction,” as a newly published paper puts it, concerns the critically endangered mangrove finch (Camarhynchus heliobates). Native to the Galápagos Islands, the species has found itself plagued by invasive species for decades. The finches have completely vanished from one of their homes, Fernandina Island, and now survive in just one small population of 80 to 100 birds on the west coast of Isabel Island.

Conservationists working to preserve this species have done a good job recently managing the invasive rats and parasitic flies that took a toll on mangrove finch populations, but the new research reveals that the crisis has had a lasting after-effect. The birds on Isabel Island now have half of the genetic diversity that they had a century ago.

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