THE LORD GOD BIRD, R.I.P. Death Stalks The Anthropocene World By Dr. Lorin Swinehart “There is terrible evil in the world. It comes from men. Men will never rest until they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.” —Richard Adams Watership Down
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ne would almost anticipate hearing weeping, wailing, and lamentations across the globe at the doleful news that the beautiful ivory-billed woodpecker had at last been declared extinct. The “Lord God Bird” had joined the growing list of species, like the passenger pigeon that once blackened our skies with its countless numbers, that are gone forever. Once gone, no species will ever be seen again. The first response of those who sighted the woodpecker was, “Lord God!” providing it with the nickname The Lord God Bird. The ivory-billed woodpecker had once inhabited coniferous forests and lowland areas across
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the American South. Over the years, the great bird had become increasingly rare. As always, habitat destruction was
El Ojo del Lago / January 2022
the main culprit. When so many Southern forests were decimated by loggers, the ivory-billed’s homeland shrank to nearly nothing. Those who hunted the rare bird, seeking its plumage for women’s hats or to fill private collections, share the blame. The last accepted sighting of the bird was in 1944, and the last sighting in Cuba was 1987. In the years since, sounds and sightings of the ivory-billed had been reported in Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, and elsewhere. In 2004, Gene Sparling reported an ivory-billed sighting in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas. The report was good for local business as ornithologists and bird lovers converged upon the neighboring small town. Local restaurants offered woodpecker burgers, and one barbershop provided woodpecker haircuts. The Nature Conservancy purchased 18,000 acres of possible ivory-billed habitat in hopes of preserving a small population of the magnificent bird. Alas, it all came to naught. If Mr. Sparling was correct in identifying an ivorybilled, it may have been the last surviving specimen in that area or anywhere else. While I will never be blessed with the sight of an ivory-billed woodpecker, I have on a few occasions met one of its close relatives, the pileated woodpecker. The first time was in Ohio’s Fowlers Woods Nature Preserve. I was hiking solo, as is so often my wont, when I heard a deep drumming, as though someone was beating on a hollow log with a fence post. The pileated woodpecker, like the now vanished ivory-billed, drums in order to warn of interlopers, defend territory, or solicit mating. What met my gaze as I came to a sudden halt reminded me more of either a pterodactyl resurrected in the twenty-first century or the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker. The pileated woodpecker may have a wingspan of nearly three feet. One’s first sighting of a pileated inspires both awe and disbelief. It seems that the numbers of pileated woodpeckers are increasing at the present. While I did not hear Woody’s raucous laugh, it is true that the popular cartoon woodpecker was modeled after a pileated. I could well imagine Woody’s hilarious laugh as he pecked down a pesky utility pole. Sadly, the ivory-billed woodpecker was not the only species to be declared extinct in the recent report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There are 22 others, including nine birds, one bat, a plant that only appears on some Pacific islands, and eight freshwater mussels. Globally, many other species tip precariously on the edge of extinction. While some may not rue the pass-
ing of an endangered bat, in the world of nature everything has a proper place, even the often feared and loathed bat. Bats do eat mosquitoes (while mosquitoes, it seems, exist to feed bats), and they spread seeds and pollinate crops and flowers. Most of us would not give a thought to a vanishing freshwater mussel. I remember canoeing down Ohio’s Mohican River and collecting abandoned mussel shells which I used to hold paper clips and other items on my classroom desk. I hope some sort of freshwater mussel survives yet in Midwestern streams. It has been reported recently that even the American bumble bee, one of our chief pollinators, may soon buzz no more about our vegetable and flower gardens. A variety of factors are at work in the case of the bumble bee, including pathogens, climate change, and pesticides. The World Wildlife Fund reports that one of every five animals present today face extinction, that 28,000 may vanish in the near future. The list includes several species of elephants in Africa and Asia, as well as rhinos, gorillas, the orangutang, chimpanzees and bonobos, Indian, Indonesian and Siberian tigers, the Tibetan snow leopard, various species of sea turtles, the spider monkey, dugong, pangolin, and polar bear. A new term has emerged in recent years to describe and define our era, the Anthropocene, a time in which humans dominate the entire globe, for better or, far more often, worse. There have been mass extinctions in the past, an estimated one every 26,000,000 years, mostly, it seems, triggered by asteroid collisions. The human footprint is responsible for the great majority of extinctions or near extinctions in our time. Humans may also provide the solutions. The lowly snail darter, a tiny fish facing elimination by the rising waters of the Tellico Dam many years ago, now thrives in nearby streams because of a serious effort to save it. The American bison that once covered our prairies was gunned down until only a small population remained. Now, its numbers have increased, and many are raised commercially by livestock farmers and ranchers. After President Richard Nixon eliminated the use of DDT on federal lands, many bird species began a comeback, including the red tail hawk, the kestrel, the pelican, and our nation’s symbol, the bald eagle. Even the gigantic California condor, once extinct in the wild but rescued through human intervention, again drifts across the skies above the arid landscapes of California, Utah, and Mexico. In the short run, is there hope for preserving some species facing annihilation during the Anthropocene? Dr. Continued on page 48
