Threatened & Extinct Species

Dead as a Dodo

It is a sad fact that, in the last few hundred years man has been responsible for the extinction of a great many bird species – from the notorious, range restricted, dodo to the millions of passenger pigeons that once blackened the skies of North America or the thousands of Great Auks eaten by sailors.

The causes vary from the extinction of the St Stephen’s Island Wren whose entire population was destroyed by one cat; the pet of a lighthouse keeper, to the extirpation of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker through habitat destruction or the New Zealand Moa for food, or the Huia partly for its feathers. The vast majority of extinctions caused by humanity have actually been caused by our propensity to introduce animals to places they should never be. New Zealand is sadly a case in point where man did not set foot until around 700 years ago, and from that time onwards the introduction of animals either out-competed with the locals or were still predated upon them. The Maori bought Polynesian rats, which devastated ground-nesting birds. Europeans introduced mustelids, foxes, and any number of other creatures which killed off many species entirely or pushed others to the very brink. Even in recent times, possums were introduced, which love eating the eggs of any bird and now exist in millions more than they do in their native Australia.

Brought back from the brink – Seychelles Robin Copsychus sechellarum – Adrian Scottow CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Even more sadly we do not seem to have learned our lesson and habitat destruction continues along with our wasteful societies causing the climate of the whole world to change. We could cause an extinction event as great as that natural phenomenon which wiped out the dinosaurs. Intensive farming is responsible across the developed world for pushing other species to the fringes. Elsewhere, virgin habitat is destroyed to make way for farming. Wherever man goes, extinctions tend to follow.

Those of us who care can not only help the efforts of conservationists to preserve the habitats of many endangered species; we can also change the way we live to reduce the pressure on the wild world whether it be population control or better use of scarce resources and more enlightened energy production.

Mere support of good causes is not enough – we all have to make sacrifices or many many more species will disappear and further impoverish our natural world.