Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid struck Earth, causing the extinction of around 75% of all species. This event was so significant that we now use it to define the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. There had only been four extinction events of this magnitude up until then; today, we are living through the sixth – and we are its cause.
News of the sixth mass-extinction often comes in the form of statistics – 1 million species threatened with extinction; extinctions now occurring up to 1,000 times more frequently than before humans – and we are left none the wiser about what it is we are losing. A few years ago, I asked the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for a list of species that had recently gone extinct. I wanted to understand what was happening to the natural world, beyond the numbers. The list they sent back contained species from all over the world. One in particular, however, stood out to me.
The Christmas Island pipistrelle was a tiny bat the size of a prune that lived only on Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. It had once been a common sight, darting through the night air acrobatically as it fed on insects. But in the late 1980s it began to decline as a result of predation by introduced species. On 26 August 2009, the last remaining Christmas Island pipistrelle was heard one final time, at exactly 38 seconds past 11.29pm; after that, silence.
The date on which this bat went extinct was my 23rd birthday. It was bizarre, realising I could remember exactly what I’d been doing the moment an entire species vanished on the other side of the planet. Scrolling back through social media, even more of that day came together: what I’d eaten, who I’d been with, the weather. Extinction, a phenomenon that can feel so distant and divorced from our lives, suddenly felt personal and immediate.
Species are declared extinct every year by the IUCN. Most were last seen centuries ago and have only recently been assessed, but some were seen within our lifetimes. Of these, many of us have lived our lives completely unaware even of their existence, let alone their disappearance. However, on the days they went extinct, they left the world radically altered, bringing to a close stories that had lasted millions of years.
How to memorialise this kind of mind-boggling loss? In the UK, one group of artists and campaigners came up with the Remembrance Day for Lost Species, held annually on 30 November. It invites people around the world to mark the moment, be that through talks and lectures, art, vigils or something as simple as lighting a candle in their home.
The day also provides a space for broader conversations related to the extinction crisis. On the Pacific island of Huahine, the traditional Polynesian hei jewellery-making industry collapsed overnight when the island’s Partula snails – whose shells were used as beads – were driven to extinction by a predatory snail introduced in the 1970s. The Bramble Cay melomys, a rodent that was the Great Barrier Reef’s sole endemic mammal, became the first mammalian extinction caused by anthropogenic climate change after rising sea levels led to the flooding of its island home between 2009 and 2011. Today, on nearby Erub island, the Indigenous Erubam Le people (the traditional owners of Bramble Cay) are dealing with the devastating effects of the same sea level rise on their way of life. These stories underline how the extinction crisis and issues of social justice and human rights intersect. Any day of remembrance can also be a celebration of life, and this day is no different. It is an opportunity to engender hope, to teach children and adults alike about the incredible people from all over the world who tried to save recently extinct species, and who continue to fight for others today. After all, though money funds conservation, hope can be said to fuel it.
Species-focused conservation is not without its problems. Often funding is allocated to more charismatic – that is, the fiercer, cuter, more beautiful or culturally significant – species. In the case of the Christmas Island pipistrelle, for instance, the Australian government set aside no funding for it in 2006, when it was recognised as critically endangered, while simultaneously allocating $3.2m to protect the popular orange-bellied parrot.
It is easy to recognise the cuteness of a panda, or the power of a tiger, or the hugeness of a whale, and feel the urge to fight for the conservation of these animals; they are in a sense larger than life. However, by taking notice of the species we have recently lost, we can start to redefine what we see as “charismatic” or wondrous.
Plectostoma sciaphilum, for instance, a Malaysian species so obscure it didn’t even have a common name, was a snail the size of a sesame seed; so small that, to the naked eye, it just looked like a dot. However, this species, if you take the time to get to know it, was remarkable. Only under a microscope would it reveal its intricate helter skelter-shaped shell made up of a beautiful spectrum of colours, from lemon yellow at its base to a rich burgundy at its tip. For millions of years, it lived on a single limestone hill the size of Russell Square, and nowhere else in the world, before its home was completely quarried away to make cement in the early 2000s. Another species that recently went extinct was the Catarina pupfish, a tiny fish that lived in a small lagoon in Mexico and that wagged its tail, played and begged for food like a puppy.
A Remembrance Day for Lost Species is also, then, an opportunity to raise awareness for lesser known and less conventionally appealing species, and consider how we can distribute funding more equally. But, ultimately, people who observe it can use this day in any way they choose. It can simply be a day on which you learn about something entirely new to you; about a snail whose shells once adorned the crowns of Polynesian nobility, or a rare rodent that lived out its life on just a tiny patch of shifting sand, or perhaps a little brown bat with a fuzzy face that petered out of existence on your birthday.
Tom Lathan is author of Lost Wonders: 10 Tales of Extinction from the 21st Century (Picador).
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Further reading
Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine (Arrow, £12.99)
Forget Me Not by Sophie Pavelle (Bloomsbury Wildlife, £10.99)
Otherlands by Thomas Halliday (Penguin, £10.99)
