On a bluff at the confluence between the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers, you will find a monument, one whose implications are truly staggering.
It commemorates the shooting of the last Passenger pigeon in Wisconsin in 1899, and was erected by Aldo Leopold, who some of you may know about as a pioneer ecologist, about 40 years later. The final Passenger pigeon on earth, an elderly one called Martha, shuffled off her mortal coil in Cincinnati Zoo 15 years later. Gone. No more. A formal extinction. Bullets, nets, poison were all deployed, in an adventure that makes Mao’s attack on the sparrows in the 1950s look like a mere side show.
You might think: ‘well, there’s 11,000 bird species on earth, and only 182 have gone extinct in the last 500 years or so. We can live with that wastage rate.’
Not with biodiversity in mind, we can’t, but that’s not my main point. The main point about the Passenger pigeon was that, a mere 28 years before that last one got shot in Wisconsin, it was recorded to be the most numerous bird on earth, with approximate 3.5 billion making their home on the American continent. Indeed, where that monument now stands, they recorded a nesting site that was 850 square miles in extent, and contained around a quarter of a billion birds. You have probably read accounts of the sky being darkened for hours as a flock flew by.
‘We who erect this monument,’ said Leopold, ‘are performing a dangerous act. Because our sorrow is genuine, we are tempted to believe that we had no part in the demise of the pigeon. The truth is that our grandfathers, who did the actual killing, were our agents. They were our agents in the sense that they shared the conviction, which we have only now begun to doubt, that it is more important to multiply people and comforts than to cherish the beauty of the land in which they live. This, then, is a monument to a bird we have lost, and to a doubt we have gained.’
Seventy-five years later, there is a doubt, too, about the future of the curlew as a breeding bird in Britain. Since 1960, its population has declined by 90%, to the point that, right now, it occupies pride of place as the UK’s most critically endangered breeding bird. Early silage cutting, predation, livestock, disturbance and even dog-walking have led this iconic and evocative bird to the precipice beyond which lies only silence.
However, unlike the Passenger pigeon, there is lots that can be done, to which end, and inspired by Mary Colwell’s wonderful book Curlew Moon, a few of us joined together about a year ago with Mary to reverse the trend. We called our charity Curlew Action, and we have a firm plan to work proactively with farmers, landowners and other conservation charities to locate and protect (in so far as we can) every single breeding curlew. We even have music legend David Gray as our hugely enthusiastic patron.
What we don’t have is enough money. 2020, you don’t need me to tell you, was a lousy year to try to set up a charity, but people still felt strongly enough to give us £36,000 of the initial £100,000 we need.
So, as my contribution to the cause, I will be walking my 86 kg, 61 year old body, 50 miles in one day to raise funds, and draw attention to the problem, and the opportunity. I’ll be doing this the weekend before World Curlew Day, which falls on April 21st. It won’t be pretty. My body never is, but it is even less so when it is being asked to do stupid things.
I know you get asked for support a great deal. We all do. But if the curlew moves you, and you would like your grandchildren to enjoy that melodious bubbling just as you have, please consider sponsoring me a quid or two. Every pound I raise will be supplemented by £0.50p by the Hunter Foundation, a Scottish trust that explains why I will be wearing tartan for the day! And if you feel strongly enough, please share the blog with others who might be interested. You might even want to join for a mile or so. (The link is below)
My apologies for the commercial nature of this blog, but at least you now know about the extraordinary story of the Passenger pigeon.
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