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| Carolina Parakeet, extinct in 1914 |
The modern extinction crisis has hit birds hard -- it's not just the passenger pigeon and the great auk that are gone, according to the list created by Martin Fowlie at Birdlife International, there's 130 more:
These are extinctions in the last 500 years. If you think that the worst is over and we know better now, I'm here to tell you that the worst is yet to come and though we mean well in our conservation efforts, our numbers and our appetite for land and resources is the new force of nature. The prospects for the crisis getting worse before it gets better are embedded in this list of not 21, not 210, but 2122 endangered birds. You can also read about bird poaching in Cyprus, where in 2010, some 2 million migrating birds were caught and sold to be eaten. See also how Todd McGrain has been memorializing five extinct North American birds through The Lost Bird Project. If you want to do something to help birds this holiday season, why not join the Christmas Bird Count? You can probably find a site near you.
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