"The species was considered extinct in South Australia, with no official records for some 100 years or more," district ranger Ross Anderson told Newsweek.
The audience for Newsweek is lay people not ecologists. It’s completely predictable that this usage of the word would create misunderstanding. Seems like misleading clickbait to me with a cover of plausible deniability.
Obviously, but that doesn’t mean they don’t interview ecologists or biologists. “Extirpation” is way less layman friendly than “locally extinct,” and the article makes it extremely clear that this is an animal that hadn’t been seen in a specific region for years. Skimming the headline and deciding it means “they thought it was completely extinct” is a problem with the reader, not the headline or the term “locally extinct.”
The audience for Newsweek is lay people not ecologists. It’s completely predictable that this usage of the word would create misunderstanding. Seems like misleading clickbait to me with a cover of plausible deniability.
Obviously, but that doesn’t mean they don’t interview ecologists or biologists. “Extirpation” is way less layman friendly than “locally extinct,” and the article makes it extremely clear that this is an animal that hadn’t been seen in a specific region for years. Skimming the headline and deciding it means “they thought it was completely extinct” is a problem with the reader, not the headline or the term “locally extinct.”