Lamenting the predicament of dying races became an increasingly prominent ‎occupation in the long nineteenth century. Novelists, painters, scientists, politicians, poets, ‎travel writers and missionaries all contributed to creating and perpetuating the sense that ‎some peoples were doomed to a speedy extinction. For example, in 1847, a reviewer of a ‎London exhibition of San performers observed that the race ‘must either become civilised or ‎become extinct’. Arguing that the latter option was ‘more probable’, he advised Londoners ‎to take advantage of the opportunity to see the increasingly rare specimens.‎ ‎ The feelings of ‎imminent change were not unfounded as many human societies found themselves ravaged ‎by the new diseases, loss of land and warfare they suffered due to imperial expansion. Most ‎famously, in 1869 William Lanney, often argued to be the last Tasmanian man, passed ‎away. Just seven years later, Trugernanner, the ‘last’ Tasmanian woman followed suit. The circumstances leading to this loss sparked and stimulated great discussion over ‎the kinds of political activity that were appropriate for civilised nations, and how best to ‎tackle the fate of the European empires whilst learning from past lessons. Early-modern ‎writers had long noted the apparent decimation of some indigenous peoples; however, such ‎discussions took on a new and urgent form in the nineteenth century as commentators were ‎increasingly able to appeal to a new scientific understanding of extinction as an endemic feature of natural change. For example, in 1871, Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man naturalised extinction as a feature of intercultural contact arguing that it followed ‘chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe, and race with race.’ This paper will explore how scientific discussions of animal extinction were quickly adopted to discuss human population changes within settler colonies and in circumstances many would now see as genocide. In doing so, it will focus on the relationship between scientific knowledge and political policy-making in an imperial context.