Extinction in Black, White, and Pink

The photo below was taken by David Seth-Smith in 1926.  It's a shame that it's in black-and-white, because I imagine the scene was quite vivid in color.  The birds pictured are pink-headed ducks, a species of waterfowl found in South Asia.  Note the use of the past tense.  Though the IUCN still technically lists the species as Critically Endangered, in truth they have not been seen for decades (since 1949, to be exact), and are almost certainly extinct.

Like the quagga, thylacine, and Carolina parakeet, as well as the famous passenger pigeon, this species survived long enough to be housed in modern zoo collections.  I wonder if the duck had been able to hold on just a little longer, if just a few more birds had made their way into zoos; considering the era, actually, private waterfowl collections, such as the UK's WWT or the US's Sylvan Heights, may have been a better bet.  If enough birds had been kept with serious efforts to breed them, maybe the species could have been saved.  The odds would have been stacked against it, but other endangered species have bounced back from equally dire odds.

Again, the pink-headed duck technically still is an endangered species, not an extinct one, though a formal change in status seems to be only a matter of time.  As another Earth Day passes us by, we can look back at our questionable, rather mixed record in saving endangered species, and try to promise ourselves - and our descendants - that we'll do better to save the next one.  And the one after.