https://grist.org/science/eulogy-for-a-cactus-florida-key-largo/
The last stand of Key Largo cactus in all of Florida has been lost to sea level rise. As the world inevitably warms, what's next?
I assume Ron DeSantis will be holding a press conference talking about how successful he was at eradicating this dangerous cactus that has poked dozens of Americans on Key Largo and a tourist or two.
It isn't in any other places. They took cuttings from the last known plants to hopefully preserve it, but it's functionally extinct.
No, extirpation is a local extinction. This species does not exist elsewhere. It's not in any gardens or greenhouses. All we have left, essentially, is its DNA. You've already been told that.
Or are you claiming as long as we have a species' genetic material, it isn't extinct? Because I'm not seeing too many mammoths around these days, but we still sequenced their genome. I'd say they're not extirpated, I'd say they've been extinct for thousands of years.
Right. From the article:
From the critically imperiled Big Pine partridge pea to the jumping prickly apple, any number of coastal species in the Florida Keys could be wiped out next in one of the places most vulnerable to sea level rise. And unlike the Key Largo cacti, which survives, if only barely, elsewhere, several of them are the last of their kind.
But this event still highlights another aspect of loss due to climate change, and it's worth marking.