  Black hole evaporation is generally considered inevitable for low-mass black
holes, yet there is no confirmation of this remarkable hypothesis. Here, we
propose a phenomenological model that appeals to the possible survival of light
quasi-extremal primordial black holes as a significant dark matter component
and show that the related cosmological and astrophysical constraints disappear
for reasonable degrees of quasi-extremality. The results obtained are general,
conservative and should be taken as a proof of principle for future,
model-specific analyses.
