Hardly A week Goes Past Without News Of Another Species On Our Planet Becoming Extinct,

so it was great news to hear of one that has been 're-discovered', 

photograph National Geographic, as it happens, experts calculate that between 0.01 and 0.1% of all species will become extinct each year, between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate, experts actually call this natural extinction rate the background extinction rate, this simply means the rate of species extinctions that would occur if we humans were not around which mean that roughly between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year, back to the one that has 're-discovered', the Lord Howe Island stick insect, (Dryococelus australis), was considered extinct by 1920, and we helped wipe it out! it happened like this, 

photographer: Samuel J. Hood Studio Collection, the SS Makambo, (above), ran aground on the shore of Lord Howe Island in 1918, there was only one immediate casualty—a passenger who drowned as the ship was being evacuated for repairs, but in also finding their way to shore, black rats (Rattus rattus) also made landfall, and with no natural predators survived, and ate some of the local population, the Lord Howe Island stick insect amongst them, others included:

·        Lord Howe Island thrush (Turdus poliocephalus vinitinctus). A subspecies of the island thrush, this bird was a ground-nesting species and an easy target for the rats.

·        Lord Howe gerygone (Gerygone insularis). This small insectivorous bird disappeared as rats raided its nests.

·        Lord Howe starling (Aplonis fusca hulliana). The starling succumbed to competition and predation.

·        Lord Howe fantail (Rhipidura fuliginosa cervina). A subspecies of the New Zealand fantail, it was wiped out as the rats preyed on its eggs and chicks.

·        Robust white-eye (Zosterops strenuus). This distinctive bird was another victim of rat predation, vanishing within a few years of the rats’ arrival.

and now the good news, a few climbers had reported stumbling on suspicious insect remains on Ball’s Pyramid, a tall sea stack about 14 miles from Lord Howe Island, from the article:

'In 2001, two determined researchers, Dr. David Priddel and Dr. Nicholas Carlile from the NSW Government’s Office of Environment and Heritage, decided to settle the mystery once and for all.

They joined an expedition to Ball’s Pyramid, a tall sea stack about 14 miles from Lord Howe Island, where

A tiny population of living Lord Howe Island stick insects had somehow persisted there. 

“We’d get requests from people saying they were going to find this stick insect,” says Carlile, “but then you’d look at the list of people and there wouldn’t be an entomologist on there!”

Not only did a few insects survive, but they also managed to multiply within a cramped, precarious habitat.

Researchers believe the survivors on Ball’s Pyramid likely benefited from the rugged environment, which had no rats.

Another factor that may have helped is a special trick called parthenogenesis, which lets female insects lay fertile eggs even without a mate.'

what a great success story, literally back from the dead, the full fascinating story of these insects is here.