they're still there, somewhere

In his book Throwim' Way Leg, naturalist Tim Flannery mentions the resistance of New Guineans to the idea that species may go extinct under the pressure of excessive hunting. When faced with the fact that a certain animal is no more to be found in a certain zone, they simply point in the general direction of a nearby village and say "there are still plenty of them over there" (of course, inhabitants of that village would say the same, pointing in the reverse direction). Alternatively, they explain the absence by saying that the animal only shows itself to very virtuous hunters, who have undertaken exacting and complicated purification ceremonies.

This refusal to consider the possibility of extinction reminds me of Thomas Jefferson. In his Notes on the State of Virginia [1781], he wrote:

The bones of the Mammoth which have been found in America, are as large as those found in the old world. It may be asked, why I insert the Mammoth, as if it still existed? I ask in return, why I should omit it, as if it did not exist? Such is the oeconomy of nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken. To add to this, the traditionary testimony of the Indians, that this animal still exists in the northern and western parts of America, would be adding the light of a taper to that of the meridian sun. Those parts still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed by us, or by others for us. He may as well exist there now, as he did formerly where we find his bones.