when the national park service excavated
the world's most complete pygmy mammoth
skeleton in 1994 whose replica lies
before you
it was like unearthing a dirt encrusted
key to unlock the door into our island's
past and present finding a passport to
other islands and island-like landscapes
in the world and providing a bridge into
the future
the key opens the door into
understanding the island's unique plants
and animals the passport takes us around
the globe to wrangle island where dwarf
mammoths roamed only 3700 years ago and
into tasmania the amazon rainforest and
yellowstone where human activity has
carved once diverse ecosystems into
isolated islands of extinction
and the bridge to the future well that
depends on you
studying the pygmy mammoth reveals how
important the channel islands are in
illuminating the mysteries of evolution
the isolation of the islands have made
them natural laboratories of
evolutionary extravagance as seen not
only in the pygmy mammoth but also in
the extinct giant mouse the diminutive
island fox the munchkin dudliya and the
giant bright blue island j
isolated from their mainland relations
and exposed to unique environmental
conditions the ancestors of these plants
and animals along with 70 others
responded by becoming new species unique
to the islands
found nowhere else on earth
one of the most common evolutionary
responses to island life is a change in
body size why is this it has been
proposed by researchers that it's
related to food resources competition
and predators but we don't really know
for sure
we hope the discovery of the pygmy
mammoth will provide us with new
insights
and this evolutionary process this
creation of new species occurs
throughout the world's islands making
all islands unique and invaluable
on wrangle island sicily and malta dwarf
mammoths descended from normal-sized
animals from the adjacent mainland
giant tortoises and marine iguanas
evolved on the galapagos islands
honeycreepers on hawaii
pygmy hippopotamuses on madagascar
komodo dragons on komodo
key deer on islands off florida that are
half the body weight of mainland
white-tailed deer
many of the world's gaudiest life forms
occur on islands writes david cuomin in
his book the song of the dodo islands
are havens and breeding grounds for the
unique and anomalous
they are natural laboratories of
extravagant evolutionary experimentation
coyman goes on to point out that
unfortunately islands also are hotbeds
of extinction
studying the pygmy mammoth and other
island species reveal that due to the
physical boundaries of islands limited
population of species and lack of
genetic variability within these species
plants and animals on islands are
particularly vulnerable to extinction
the munchkin deadlier is an extremely
rare plant that is found only on one
island in channel islands national park
santa rosa and is restricted to areas on
the east end of the island that are no
bigger than the room you are in
it has only two thousand individuals in
its entire population
that's it just two thousand
without protection the small population
of the unique and beautiful munchkin
dudleyas could become extinct
lost forever
unfortunately protection came too late
for the endemic santa barbara island
song sparrow the destruction of this
sparrow's sagebrush nesting habitat by
farming and ranching activities and the
introduction of feral cats led to the
extinction of this unique species in the
1960s
this sparrow one of the smallest forms
of song sparrow and differentiated by
its very gray back was once found only
on santa barbara island and is now lost
forever
thousands of similar situations occur
throughout the islands of the world
but these situations are no longer
limited to islands they have come to the
mainland
the world's landscapes from tasmania to
the amazon rainforest to yellowstone to
the southern california coastal sage
scrub community have been and continue
to be carved into island-like fragments
by human activity
all over the world once diverse
ecosystems are shrinking and becoming
separated from one another becoming
islands in effect
islands that are hotbeds of extinction
hot beds that have an extinction rate
that is a hundred times above normal and
in rainforest areas a thousand times
above normal
[Music]
nowadays it's not just a question of
dodos and elephant birds and moas
wright's kwamen nowadays we're losing a
little bit of everything
within a few decades of present trends
continue we'll be losing a lot of
everything
as we extinguish a large portion of the
planet's biological diversity we will
lose also a large portion of our world's
beauty
complexity intellectual interest
spiritual depth and ecological health
we are in fact sterilizing our own
biosphere
committing a form of suicide
this dreary forecast is frightening but
not hopeless if we use the knowledge we
gain from studying the pygmy mammoth and
the islands we may be able to help in
the struggle to keep alive the island
and world species living today
this is the bridge building role taking
your awareness of the preciousness of a
species now long ago extinct to the
action of efforts to safeguard to
preserve the plants and animals found in
channel islands national park and
throughout the world today
[Music]
you