Four extinct North American birds, in ascending order of ATL save-ability. Next two will go on the after-1900 forum.
2) The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. The world's largest woodpecker -- think of a bird as long as your forearm, with a beak like your index finger. Also known as the Lord God Bird.
Found across the Southern US (basically the Old South, with some enclaves in the border states) in deep forests and swamps, and also on some Caribbean islands. Last confirmed sighting in the US was in 1944, though plausible unconfirmed sightings continued in the US until the 1960s, and in Cuba until the 1990s. Officially declared extinct in 1999; a much-touted series of sightings in Arkansas c. 2005 seems to have been a set of false alarms.
("Is the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker really, truly extinct" is one of those questions that can get any three randomly selected bird enthusiasts in a hissing, shrieking, squawking dispute within a minute or two. But the International Ornithological Union says yes, and I'm inclined to agree. It's a big damn bird, loud, and conspicuous -- black and white with a brilliant red crown. And while there are some pretty wild places in Louisiana and Cuba, we're not talking about the jungles of the Congo here. If we could discover the last colony of Bulmer's Fruit Bat in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, I think we would have found the Ivory-Bill here in the US after 50 years of looking hard.)
Why it went extinct: Habitat destruction. Big birds, they needed a lot of acreage to provide enough rotten trees. And the trees had to be high-quality, first-growth timber -- exactly the stuff that got cleared first by settlers, and then cut down by lumber companies. The last US breeding colony was destroyed by a lumber company (over the anguished shrieks of the Audobon Society) in 1944-5. Ironically, sluggish economic development in Cuba may have saved a few for a while, but not enough habitat to support a long-term viable population.
How to save it: Tough... almost as bad as the auk. You need to save a big stretch of first-growth bottomland forest -- first from cotton-growing settlers, then from loggers.
But not (IMO) quite impossible. The bird made it to 1944, after all. Just one more generation and it would overlap with Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy, and the newly energized environmentalist movement that emerged after the mid-'60s.
Possibilities:
-- Get something like the Nature Conservancy up and running 40 years early. It's not _that_ wild an idea; the basic concept -- buy private land to make long-term private parks -- is pretty obvious. (Note that this could have interesting long-term knockons on the development of environmentalism in the US.)
-- Make the IBW the symbolic bird of some state... or of the Confederacy! After all, its original habitat overlapped quite precisely with the CSA.
The problem with this one is that the whole state bird idea didn't really get going until after WWII. Also, the idea of a symbolic bird as something you _conserve_ was slow to arise. Rather, it was a popular source for feathers, beaks and souvenirs... this sort of thing helped push the bald eagle to the edge of extinction.
Any other ideas?
Doug M.
2) The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. The world's largest woodpecker -- think of a bird as long as your forearm, with a beak like your index finger. Also known as the Lord God Bird.
Found across the Southern US (basically the Old South, with some enclaves in the border states) in deep forests and swamps, and also on some Caribbean islands. Last confirmed sighting in the US was in 1944, though plausible unconfirmed sightings continued in the US until the 1960s, and in Cuba until the 1990s. Officially declared extinct in 1999; a much-touted series of sightings in Arkansas c. 2005 seems to have been a set of false alarms.
("Is the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker really, truly extinct" is one of those questions that can get any three randomly selected bird enthusiasts in a hissing, shrieking, squawking dispute within a minute or two. But the International Ornithological Union says yes, and I'm inclined to agree. It's a big damn bird, loud, and conspicuous -- black and white with a brilliant red crown. And while there are some pretty wild places in Louisiana and Cuba, we're not talking about the jungles of the Congo here. If we could discover the last colony of Bulmer's Fruit Bat in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, I think we would have found the Ivory-Bill here in the US after 50 years of looking hard.)
Why it went extinct: Habitat destruction. Big birds, they needed a lot of acreage to provide enough rotten trees. And the trees had to be high-quality, first-growth timber -- exactly the stuff that got cleared first by settlers, and then cut down by lumber companies. The last US breeding colony was destroyed by a lumber company (over the anguished shrieks of the Audobon Society) in 1944-5. Ironically, sluggish economic development in Cuba may have saved a few for a while, but not enough habitat to support a long-term viable population.
How to save it: Tough... almost as bad as the auk. You need to save a big stretch of first-growth bottomland forest -- first from cotton-growing settlers, then from loggers.
But not (IMO) quite impossible. The bird made it to 1944, after all. Just one more generation and it would overlap with Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy, and the newly energized environmentalist movement that emerged after the mid-'60s.
Possibilities:
-- Get something like the Nature Conservancy up and running 40 years early. It's not _that_ wild an idea; the basic concept -- buy private land to make long-term private parks -- is pretty obvious. (Note that this could have interesting long-term knockons on the development of environmentalism in the US.)
-- Make the IBW the symbolic bird of some state... or of the Confederacy! After all, its original habitat overlapped quite precisely with the CSA.
The problem with this one is that the whole state bird idea didn't really get going until after WWII. Also, the idea of a symbolic bird as something you _conserve_ was slow to arise. Rather, it was a popular source for feathers, beaks and souvenirs... this sort of thing helped push the bald eagle to the edge of extinction.
Any other ideas?
Doug M.
