I’m sick as a dog right now - just started sneezing uncontrollably this morning, always great when you get a cold come on that fast - but one quick thing in lieu of a full newsletter before I go to bed.

HACK HACK WHEEZE BUT SOMETHING ABOUT SCIENTIFIC REPORTING AND KOALAS ANYWAY

A couple of days ago, a bunch of news stories blurted out that koalas are “functionally extinct” after the Australian Koala Foundation issued a statement that this was the case following the latest round of Australian brushfires. The ensuing news kerfuffle is a good object lesson in news consumption.

See, koalas aren’t functionally extinct. Or, well, they are. The problem here is that “functionally extinct” is a phrase that can have different meanings depending on the user, because it’s not strictly speaking scientific terminology in the sense of “everybody agrees what this means.” “Extinct” is a term that everybody agrees upon: there ain’t no more of them, and so forth. “Functionally extinct” usually means “okay, there are still some left, but at this point the numbers are so limited that the species isn’t genetically diverse enough to be able to reproduce.” The problem with this phrase is that although that sounds perfectly reasonable as an extension upon the idea of extinction, there’s actually lots of debate as to where those numbers get that limited.

Like, for example, take the northern white rhino. You might think the northern white rhino is functionally extinct at this point, because the last male northern white rhino died earlier this year and that’s usually the end of a dual-sex species. However, conservationists have harvested eggs from the last two female northern white rhino, and fertilized those eggs with sperm collected from several male white rhinos, and apparently they have about a dozen or so of these eggs which could, in theory, be implanted in southern white rhino mothers and thus restart the species. Now, granted, artificial implantation of this nature isn’t easy to begin with. But if you ask those conservationists “is the northern white rhino functionally extinct,” their answer will be “we can still save the species,” because they are good people and will not give up. But… yeah, the northern white rhino probably is functionally extinct despite their best efforts.

Getting back to koalas, they are definitely in trouble. Koalas can only survive in eucalyptus bush because they only eat eucalyptus leaves, which leaves them vulnerable to habitat destruction, which has been happening like mad in Australia. The brushfires aren’t helping (and it sucks to see pictures of poor burned koalas), but really, most of their habitat has been destroyed by urbanization and farmland expansion. Still, there’s a few hundred thousand koalas left by most counts, including a pretty comprehensive count in 2016.

The Australian Koala Foundation, for their part, argues that the koala is functionally extinct because at this point the habitat destruction trend has gone too far. Which isn’t an unfair point, because even that 2016 koala census I mentioned A) relied on estimates and B) estimated an average population decline of 24 percent per generation, which is a precipitous drop. When a species is losing one in four every generation that’s bad, and given that koala generations are about 6 years that’s actually extremely drastic - that cuts the population down to less than half in under twenty years.

But, at the end of the day, the koala probably isn’t entirely screwed. Yet. So “functionally extinct” probably isn’t fair. Yet. And it’s the “yets” that make this so tricky, because the koala is seriously endangered and giving people an excuse to say “awwww the koalas are fine” isn’t helpful at all.

Okay, that’s it this week. See you in seven. I need to, like, drink a can of Vicks VapoRub.