My essay

Biodiversity is diversity of individuals, species and ecosystems. Because all living things are connected, diversity is important for the health of Earth. Humans can influence biodiversity. I wanted to pick the Tasmanian wolf to study because it is extinct, which is somewhat like what could happen to the Grey Wolf. Farmers do not like wolves because they kill livestock. The consequences of upsetting nature's balance can be extinction.

The Tasmanian wolf is part of the dog family. The Tasmanian wolf could weigh from 33-77 pounds. It could also be from four to six and a half feet long. The Tasmanian wolf had short gray or yellowish-brown fur with dark black stripes across the rear of it's back. The Tasmanian wolf had the largest mouth span of all wolves, from jaw to jaw.

The Tasmanian Wolf lived near the north, east, and south coasts of Australia, but also New Guinea and Tasmania. All though the Tasmanian wolf was extinct on Australia 2000 years before it was on Tasmania, it enjoyed the grasslands of the three countries.

The Tasmanian wolf became extinct September, 7, 1936 when the last captive Tasmanian wolf died. There are still claims of Tasmanian wolves in Tasmania but none of them are proven. In the year 1800 there were as many as seventy-million Thylacines ( latin name for tasmanian wolf). In the year 1870 there was as little as ten-thousand of them, and finally in 1936 there were zero Tasmanian wolves left in the world. The reason they were killed off is because that they ate farmers’ livestock and were in the way of economic growth in Tasmania, so the government made a deal so that whenever a citizen killed a thylacine they were paid a bounty. Most of the killing of the sheep was done by dingos and other "vermin" yet the thylacines were blamed. [see timeline]


Australian zoologists have inserted DNA of the extinct Tasmanian wolf in mouse embryos and control bone structure. The scientists are not trying to repopulate the species but to learn more first then they could possibly bring back the Tasmanian Wolf. They are trying to scientifically right a wrong. [see photo]


The Tasmanian wolf is often compared to the Gray wolf here in Canada. One thing that they compare is the skulls. The Gray Wolf skull has a curved bone attached to the rear end of the top jaw, giving it a more powerful clamping mouth. The thylacine has an elongated bone attached to the rear of the top jaw, giving it a wider jaw span. The thylacine large jaws scared the citizens of Tasmania and Australia into blaming all the livestock losses on the Tasmanian Wolf. [see diagram, chart]


The Gray wolf had the same problem as the Tasmanian wolf eating farmers’ livestock, but instead of totally destroying the species the government reintroduced Gray wolves to deer over-populated areas. Without wolves the deer breed too fast and eat all the farmers crops. Our government chose to re balance biodiversity by reintroducing the deer’s predator the gray wolf rather than annihilating the species.


When humans interfere with a species the consequence is possibly extinction. That is the lesson we have learned from the thylacine. Without biodiversity there would be nothing different in the world. All living things need biodiversity to survive. If there was none there would be one species of mammal, one species of vegetation and having nothing to salvage, nothing to control that mammal or vegetation couldn’t survive.