Search launched for 25 missing species

This news has been linked elsewhere on the forum, but it is again relevant to this project so I will repost here as well:

The Fernandina giant tortoise has been rediscovered in a remote corner of Fernandina 113 years after the type specimen was found. The female tortoise has been caught and moved to Santa Cruz, where it is living in a specially-constructed pen at a giant tortoise breeding centre.

The link to this news is included below:
Giant tortoise believed extinct for 100 years found in Galápagos

 

Honesty I thought that was one of the less likely ones.

 

crasy thing is the same man who go a zanzibar leopard on film

 

Wallace's Giant Bee was found as well.

 

Well that's awkward for all the posts on the first page heavily criticizing this effort

~Thylo

 

What do you guys think of the supposed Wondiwoi Tree Kangaroo seen back in September? Apparentley the guy who described the Dingiso thinks it really is one.

 

Presumably they will be able to DNA test this newly discovered one to see if its a genuine species or a hybrid as you suggest.

 

Fingers and toes firmly crossed. Hopefully they find some more, too.

It's been a good couple of years for rediscoveries it seems.

~Thylo

 

I can't access to the link of the first post... so I don't know what are these 25 species. Is the Chinese paddlefish included? It should be, if not...

 

Here is the list. I have put an * after the species that have been found:

Jackson's Climbing Salamander*
Wallace's Giant Bee*
Fernandina Giant Tortoise*
Wondiwoi Tree Kangaroo*
Pondicherry Shark
Attenborough's Long-Beacked Echidna
Pink-Headed Duck
Namdapha Flying Squirrel
Wellington's Solitary Coral
Ilin Island Cloundrunner
De Winton's Golden Mole
New Zealand Greater Short-Tailed Bat
Sierra Leone Crab
Scarlet Harlequin Frog
Himalayan Quail
Velvet Pitcher Plant
Voeltzkow's Chameleon (why?)
Omiltemi Cottontail
Bullneck Seahorse
Syr Darys Shovelnose Sturgeon
Somali Sengi
Sinu Parakeet
Miss Waldron's Red Colobus
Zug's Monitor
Silver-Backed Chevrotain

 

Why not?

 

I thought that it was considered conspecific with Furcifer rhinoceratus, but it looks like that changed last year.

 

Thanks a lot for this list! Sadly my beloved Chinese paddlefish is not in it :-( there is a shovelnose sturgeon but is not the same...

 

A secondary goal of the expedition is to also try and find chameleons Brookesia dentata and Chamaeleon grandidieri, which are native to the same region.

~Thylo

 

I think it's great that (possibly, if not probably) four of the twenty five species on the list have been rediscovered so far, and within the last year-and-a-half, too. Of course, further genetic testing is needed to confirm the tortoise's identity, but the salamander and bee are definite, and the kangaroo photographed is almost certainly the wondiwoi tree kangaroo.

Personally speaking, I'm optimistic that most of these species will be found alive. And this list doesn't even include some other notable rediscoveries in recent times, like the San Quintin kangaroo rat. And some of those species are fairly big animals, like the metre-long Namdapha flying squirrel.

I do wonder if, like the Top 10 Lost Frogs list, they will replace rediscovered species with new species that have yet to be rediscovered?

 

Well it's not one of the 25 but it is a third surprise potential rediscovery for the week:
'Extinct' Formosan clouded leopard sp... | Taiwan News

~Thylo

 

While certainly not a confirmation, that is excellent new indeed that gives some hope. I can see clouded leopards being more likely to evade detection than other big cats given their more arboreal nature. Combined with the terrain of much of Taiwan, and I can certainly see a small population clinging on.