You can still visit Costa Rica, but you’ll never find a golden toad there. At least not any more. That’s because the species no longer exists. When thinking about your next vacation, it’s standard practice to flick through a guidebook or travel website to find out more about a destination.
Visit Mauritius today, and you’ll see many lovely sights, but not the unfortunate Dodo, which went extinct sometime after 1662.
But very rarely do you think about the things you can no longer see there. And that’s the premise for this beautiful new vintage travel posters, called Unknown Tourism. Created by Expedia UK, Unknown Tourism showcases some of the world’s lost wildlife through a set of beautiful vintage-style travel posters.
Visitors to Alaska can see amazing wildlife, including grizzly bears, whales, and caribou, but not the Steller’s Sea Cow, which was hunted to extinction by 1768.
“It all began when we started thinking about the things you can’t see anymore when you go traveling,” said Matt Lindley, a spokesperson for the project. “Information about a country’s extinct wildlife can’t always be found in the guidebook. Yet it still forms part of a country’s cultural heritage and is something you may want to know about when you travel. How many people know that the Moa was once endemic to New Zealand, for instance, or the Thylacine to Tasmania? Some people may not even know what a Moa or a Thylacine is. So this project serves as a way of remembering these animals, while also revealing something new about the countries that isn’t in a guidebook.”
The Golden Toad went extinct in 1989. It only had a minute habitat in Costa Rica’s Reserva Biológica Monteverde.
There were nine species of Moa in New Zealand, with some as tall at 12 feet. Unfortunately, their giant size couldn’t save them from overhunting.
The vintage travel posters were inspired by the air travel advertisements from the 1930s to 1950s. To accompany the posters, the design team also came up with a tag line. That line imagines what it would be like to go and see these animals in real life.
Currently there are still a great many animals that are endangered. But there is also good news for animal lovers. Recent conservation efforts have resulted in improvements to the populations of animals like the giant panda and humpback whales. Some researchers are even looking at ways to bring back extinct animals, just like in Jurassic Park.
The Giant Galliwasp was last seen in Jamaica in 1840, and won’t be seen again. It likely went extinct due to the introduction of predators like the mongoose.
You can still see Tasmanian devils in Tasmania, but not the Thylacine, which went extinct in 1936.
Sources: http://www.creativebloq.com/inspiration/vintage-travel-posters-celebrate-worlds-lost-wildlife
http://www.expedia.co.uk/vc/unknowntourism/?AFFCID=UK.network.affiliatewindow.85386.0&src=phg
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