Kainaw's Journal: Not Dead Yet

Usually the mass media is quick to link any two stories together to create the impression that there is a trend going on. In the past couple weeks, I've read stories of the rediscovery of many things once claimed extinct: a special grass in Santa Catalina, a snow leopard on Mt. Everest, a wildflower in Contra Costa County Park, and a woodpecker in Arkansas.
All of these species were listed as extinct years ago by ecologists. Are ecologists jumping the gun on calling species extinct? I remember "extinction" being the hot eco-political word back in the 80's. There were commercials on television claiming that thousands of species of animals and plants were going extinct every week. To take it one step further, there were claims that the cure to cancer "could" be found in some plant or insect, but if it goes extinct, it will never be found (hence, the plot of one of Sean Connery's worse movies).
I wonder how many other species that ecologists were quick to call extinct are still alive and well in some remote area of the world. I wonder why the mass media isn't on a feeding frenzy about this. News or not, there is enough here to create a good story full of half-truths and bad logic. You could spin it to claim that the cure for cancer is closer than ever now that once-thought-extinct species are popping up all over the world. Just think of the commercial revenue an over-hyped story like that would bring in.