The FZS works on a variety of species protection projects at worldwide hotspots of biodiversity, hence supporting large numbers of endangered species. On our project page xtinct.info you can inform yourself on the projects we support with our donations and customers can choose themselves which project they would like to support with their order. According to this parts of the donation went into specific projects like the one on the giant otters in Peru.

The shirts at xtinct.info are designed by an international selection of artists and always focus on an extinct specie, that mankind was responsible for. Up to mid 2010 we already donated more than 800 EURO for conservation projects. The favourite animal with our customers has again been the Dodo!

Detailled Dodo Shirt Design by Wotto

Sandra's XTINCT Designs

She has portrayed the Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger (xtinct 1936), the Quagga (xtinct 1883) and the Hawaii Mamo (xtinct 1899) in a particular creative and detail rich way. „ I immediately liked the concept, to combine T-Shirt design and fashion with a species conservation campaign. You produce something that people want to buy, not only because it looks good, but because there is a message behind it. And the fund-raising puts the message directly into action.”

For Sandra it was important that her design “kept the object alive, but showed the dead animal, to gain a macabre character, that is not obvious at first sight. But if you take a closer look, you can see that the Tasmanian tiger’s eyes or the Hawaiian honeycreeper’s beak is composed of worms. They eat the carrion and represent the process of disintegration.”
These worms are also meant to irritate the onlooker and to spark interest for the theme and to discover the “extinct since…” information. In her third design, the Quagga, a zebra sub-species that became extinct in Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, Sandra has converted the typical black stripes into worms.

If you are curious now to take a closer look at Sandra’s designs, you can visit our t-shirt-shop, where you can not only order T-shirts in different colours and sizes but also learn more about her extinct species of choice.

thanks for translating this article to Caroline Deimel

Thylacine - Illustration by John Gould

Historically, thylacines were found in Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. But already the Aborigines put pressure on these populations by hunting and competing or prey when they first settled on these areas. With the introduction of dingos (wild dogs) in Australia, the thylacines became extinct about two thousand years ago. Only the Tasmanian population survived until the arrival of the first European settlers in the 19th century. As sheep farming became popular, thylacines were soon brandmarked as blood-thirsty killers. In the 1830s, the Tasmanian government paid 25 cents for each killed individual and consequently, the species was already very rare by the beginning of the 20th century. Although several zoos started keeping thylacines, they were not successful in breeding them. The last known specimens were kept in captivity in the 1930s, and the last animal died in 1936 in a zoo in Hobart/Tasmania. Ironically, the species was listed as protected by law in the very same year. Years later, even a protected area was created for possible survivors.
A lot of effort was put into searches for remaining Tasmanian tigers since then. However, no conclusive evidence has been found to point to its continued existence. The species was officially declared extinct in 1982 by the IUCN.

thanks for translating this article to Caroline Deimel

Thylacine-T-Shirt-Designs at XTINCT:

Sandra Barth - Thylacine

Beatrice Barth - Thylacine

Artkolchose - Thylacine

Actually the lens fly was considered to have existed only in germany, france and austria. And after its discovery (Panzer, 1798) it dissappeared completely within 50 years. Even then it was considered “mythical” with its bright reddish head and the fact that it was only seen on animal carcasses in colder times of the year.

Lens Fly male (Photo: Pablo C. Rodríguez)

It is assumed the lens fly has developed in an ecosystem where herds of large animals and also large predators existed, as it is assumed central europe looked like in the glacial times and earlier. Only large predators like sabel-toothed tigers, bears and wolves would have been able to crush the bones of the carcasses to get to the medullary cavity and the bone marrow, the likely breeding habitat of the fly’s larvae.

When mankind drove the big herds of mammoths, wisents and wild horses to extinction the fly managed to adapt to the situation by using carcasses of domestic and working animals. But by the middle of the 19th century even this diet source vanished as the industrial revolution changed hygiene-standards and agriculture. Animals carcasses would be disposed off by then. At the same time the last big predators (like wolves, bears) dissappeared from central europe removing the old diet source for the fly completely. And so the fly itself was removed from europe and declared extinct officially.

And then, 160 years later, the photographer Julio Verdú made pictures of a strange looking fly in spain. A fly he has never seen anything alike before. He asked another photographer, Pablo C. Rodríguez, as well as the entomologist Miguel Carles-Tolrá for help and they were astonished. First suspecting to see an exotic species, Miguel Carles-Tolrá soon realized they were witnessing the rediscovery of the lens fly. By march of 2010 they managed to capture dozens of live specimens in the spanish national park “Sierra de Cebollera”. In that mountainous region reaching above 2000 metres high, an area still housing a lot of wild and working animals, the lens fly obviously was still finding carcasses to feed on. Hence it was surviving in a region with merely any human impact, a region it wasn’t even known to exist in, while in history books of mankind it was considered to be extinct for 160 years.

Lens Fly pair (Photo: Pablo C. Rodríguez)

To add even more to the momentum, a second spanish team of scientists around Daniel Martín-Vega discovered the fly as well in early 2010 in spain.

However, for its supposed extinction and its interesting history the XTINCT-campaign as well was interested in the lens fly in early 2010. As a campaign, raising awareness on the human-induced global extinction, we were looking for an insect example and found it with exactly this fly. The same way we did it for the Dodo, the Thylacine or Steller’s Seacow, the lens fly as well was supposed to be portrayed by artists as an example for man-made extinction. So paralleling its rediscovery we can now also present the first artist-design. It was done by Stefanie C. Haslberger a London/Berlin based artist. Her lens fly is still influenced by the historical view on an insect supposedly only existing in museum collections anymore. Tagged with a note on its rediscovery it is now added to the XTINCT streetwear collection and carries a little more optimistic version of the extinction message onto the streets.