Last Ones: America's Endangered Species

Joel Sartore

National Geographic Magazine (David Griffin, Director of Photography; Kathy Moran, Photo Editor)

This is what extinction looks like, and it's where all the animals in this series are headed if we don't make the effort to save them. Slipping away almost unnoticed, the dusky seaside sparrow - found mainly on Florida's Merritt Island - declined from some 3,000 pairs to none as its salt marsh habitat was sprayed with DDT and taken over for use by the space program. The bird shown here is the very last dusky. It died in 1987 and is interred in a bottle of alcohol at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Joel Sartore, "Last Ones: America's Endangered Species," in POYi Archive, Item #43267, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/43267 (accessed May 19, 2024).