19/11/2024
Our disregard for wildlife speaks volumes for who and what we are.
Slender-billed Curlew declared extinct
The Slender-billed Curlew has gone. It is a tragedy on a par with the Dodo and the Great Auk, and we should hang our heads in shame. Our disregard for wildlife speaks volumes for who and what we are. The Slender-billed may not have had an economic value, it contributed nothing to the bottom line of anyone’s financial spread sheet, no one relied on these birds for their jobs or well-being, there was no conceivable reason to drive them to extinction. But it seems that is exactly what we have done.
A paper published today, Monday 18th November, confirms the global extinction of the Slender-billed Curlew (Numenius tenuirostris). A close relation of the Eurasian Curlew (N. arquata), the last reliable sighting of the Slender-billed Curlew was in Morocco in February 1995, despite dedicated searches by ornithologists.
The new paper is a collaboration between scientists from the RSPB, BirdLife International (UK), Naturalis Biodiversity Center (The Netherlands) and Natural History Museum, London, and is an assessment of how likely the species is to be extinct.
Whilst there is always hope that a species not seen for decades, or even centuries, can be rediscovered (and it does happen, as shown by the Re:wild's Search for Lost Species project), this study concluded that there is a 99.6% chance that the Slender-billed Curlew is extinct, and that it likely died off around 1995.
This is the first bird extinction in the mainland Western Paleartic (and only the third in the entire Western Palearctic, following two island species), and the assessment will be used by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species to decide on whether to change the status of the Slender-billed Curlew from Critically Endangered to Extinct.
Excerpts from the RSPB's press release, sent on behalf of the institutions involved, are included at the bottom of this article along with Mary's podcast episodes on the Slender-billed Curlew and the recent 'Curlews and extinction' webinar.
Curlew Action's Mary Colwell shares her thoughts and feelings on this heart-breaking - yet unsurprising - news:
The late, great Harvard biologist, E. O. Wilson, described the stages of the evolution of life on Earth with his signature devastating clarity. We have seen the Age of Sea Life, the Age of Plants, the Age of Reptiles, the recent Age of Mammals, and now we are entering the Age of Loneliness. It was a vision borne from his understanding of the decline of life on Earth, particularly in the last 200 years, a consequence of the inexorable rise of humanity and our activities. Rapid human growth in numbers, power and influence elbowed most everything else out of the way, with the consequence that we are suffering from isolation and a damaging erosion of spirit. We command the Earth while eradicating its complexity, diversity, and natural beauty. Humanity, he says, is singularly self-absorbed and destined to be alone and aloof in a sterile world.
It is a striking and distressing image. Evolution created a burgeoning of life that is as astonishing as it is wonder-full, only for it to be destroyed at our hands. He asked us to imagine what it would be like to live on a planet devoid of wildlife other than those generalist scavengers that can survive on human waste and uniform landscapes, creatures such as cockroaches and rats; the rest of life on earth obliterated.
The term 'Anthropocene' has also entered common parlance in recent years, a geological description of our current age in which human activity is the dominant influence on the environment, so much so it is now visible in the deposits that will form future rock formations. Ocean and river sediments, deserts and glaciers show the signature of habitat destruction, pollution and a changing climate. We are making our mark in stone whilst we silence the song of the Earth. We live in a much quieter world than even 50 years ago, there is 60% less buzzing, croaking, roaring, scuttling, blooming, singing and erupting life. Planet Earth is increasingly threadbare; it seems E. O. Wilson was right.
I recently watched a grainy video (below) of two Slender-billed Curlews, very few such films exist, and even rarer is a recording of their call. The birds potter and feed, unaware that their kind will soon have vanished from their breeding grounds in the steppes of Central Asia and the wintering grounds in the wetlands of the Mediterranean and North Africa. Hearing their song stopped me in my tracks and tears came unbidden. A soft, sweet warbling came from the speaker of my computer, more like what I imagine the song of light-hearted spirits to be, unearthly, drifting, and yet strangely familiar.
Thank goodness someone thought to record it, because we can no longer hear it for real. As of 18th November 2024, the Slender-billed Curlew is deemed extinct.
The Slender-billed Curlew was one of eight species of Curlew on Earth, but now two have gone for ever, the other two species, including our own Eurasian Curlew, are in varying degrees of peril.
The Eskimo Curlew was thought to be the most numerous wading bird in the world when it migrated between Alaska and South America, the passing flocks were said to darken the skies. It was shot in huge numbers and its feeding grounds converted to farmland; it vanished very quickly. The last confirmed sighting was in 1987 in Nebraska.
Now the Slender-billed has suffered the same fate and, yet again, excessive hunting was a major factor. They were never as numerous as the Eskimo Curlew, but they graced our planet for millions of years before we abruptly and violently ended their time. Now a video is a ghostly reminder of how easy it is to wield our power with deadly force.
We cannot bring them back, but we can learn the lesson. We can temper our overwhelming desire for growth at any cost. We can make sure landscapes are protected and nurturing. We can allow migrating species safe passage. We can soften our dogmatic assertion that we have a right to kill for no other reason than pleasure. In short, we can allow wildlife the space and peace it needs to thrive. It is within our power to do these things, but do we have the will and the imagination?
Gus Speth, former dean of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies at Yale, has been widely attributed as saying,
“I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy.”
He went on to say that,
“to deal with those issues we need a spiritual and cultural transformation.”
I firmly believe this to be true, and this cannot be achieved by science and conservation alone. Everyone has a part to play in turning around our thinking, with the arts and humanities playing a crucial role because they explore what it is to be human. The notions of character, responsibility, civility, empathy, inquiry, collaboration, the public good, the heroic, beauty, and truth are their bread-and-butter. They critique and they form new and surprising associations that speak to the soul and to the mind, and they do it through music, art, poetry, literature, movement, polemic and politics. While the antidote to the Age of Loneliness is not easily realised, it must include a range of responses, not just the pragmatic, because this is bigger than any one group alone.
As we ponder the tragedy that is the Slender-billed Curlew, an embodiment of the deep sadness at what we have done, it cannot lead to despair but to new, creative and fresh actions which welcome all to the conservation table. The Slender-billed Curlew will not have disappeared in vain if we now break the mould and use grief to power us through to a passion for Planet Earth and all it contains.
source: https://www.curlewaction.org/slender-billed-curlew-declared-extinct/
