Endangered

Some characters leave a greater impression on you than others. Perhaps, there’s something more endearing about them. Like the bird Blu. Do you remember him from the movie Rio? He was cute and fiesty.

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A blue macaw parrot, he feared he was the last of his species. In a tragic case of reality imitating art – that is exactly what has happened.

And now, all that we can do is remember.

According to a recent study by BirdLife International, the blue macaw parrot, also known as Stix macaw, is officially extinct in the wild, existing only in captivity, and that too, in very small numbers.

I recently shared a link about this  development on my Facebook profile and received several reactions to this. I realised that many shared my sadness and that prompted me to write this post.

How many more species will become extinct under our watch? How many more species will we have to watch only in the movies and not experience the joy of seeing them run and play before our eyes or even that majestic feeling of touching their beautiful, bare skin?

This list of endangered species makes for chilling reading…

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These are animals who have roamed the Earth before us. But humanity has not been kind to them. Human existence has literally trampled upon their territory and poaching has pushed their numbers to the brink of extinction. It’s a global travesty.

And at home, in South Africa, it’s worse.

The big 5 – a source of national pride – is at risk. Numbers of the African elephant, rhinoceros, lion, leopard and buffalo are all dwindling. The plight of the rhino makes headlines weekly, if not daily.

Yes, there are many conservation efforts underway but there can never be enough awareness. History has shown us that the strongest voices always come from civil society. Are we raising our voices enough? I don’t think so. And I feel guilty. I want to do more. This post here is part of that.

I hope you will join me in this journey of raising our voices to save our natural treasures – our animals. Let’s do it now. For, if the time comes, when future generations ask about the fate of these creatures under our watch – our silence then will speak volumes.

4 thoughts on “Endangered

  1. Our mamals are not as high a risk of extinction as our invertebrates, and just how little we know abut them. We are privileged that South Africa is a world leader in the Red Listing process (=assessing the rate of extinction of species and ecosystems), we are the only megadiverse country to have comprehensively assessed all plants and as a result of pressures such as natural habitat loss and invasive alien species the Red List show the loss of different species that have been assessed. The Species Status Tataset has this info but is currently offline for curation.

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