Eskimo curlew, a lost bird, deserves to be remembered

Gary Clark March 19, 2020

A 6-foot bronze sculpture of the Eskimo curlew, which is likely extinct, will stand at Galveston Island State Park as part of the “Lost Bird Project.”

While the ceremony unveiling the sculpture was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, the sculpture goes on display March 28.

I’m glad the memory of a magnificent migratory shorebird once numbering hundreds of thousands will not be forgotten. As sculptor Todd McGrain said, “Forgetting that these birds ever existed is another kind of extinction.”

Up until at least the mid-19th century, enormous flocks of Eskimo curlews migrated through Texas every spring. They blanketed coastal prairies as they stopped to rest and feed.

People may not have paid much attention to Eskimo curlews. Who would care about a horde of crow-sized brownish birds with down-curved beaks foraging in coastal prairies?

The spring migratory route of Eskimo curlews took them through the eastern half of Texas to Midwest’s tallgrass prairies where they again stopped to rest and feed. They then went to breeding grounds in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic.

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How humans killed off the only parrot native to the continental U.S.

The last Carolina parakeet died in captivity in 1918. Now, new genetic analysis has revealed what drove the bird to extinction.

BY LIZ LANGLEY

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 12, 2019

The United States was a more colorful place when flocks of Carolina parakeets flew across the sky like daytime fireworks, flashing pops of orange, yellow, and green.

The country’s only native parrot species ranged from southern New England down to Florida and as far west as Colorado, but the last one died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918. Since then, the Carolina parakeet has symbolized the perils of extinction in the United States, much like the dodo has on the global stage.

A century after the last parakeet soared over America, a mystery endures: Was the demise of the 12-inch-long bird entirely driven by people? Farmers, who saw them as crop pests, easily eliminated whole flocks, since the animals had the unfortunate habit of gathering around their fallen comrades. Hunters killed the parakeets for their plumage, which was a popular hat accessory in the 20th century. And habitat loss—particularly land-clearing for agriculture—also removed trees the birds used or nesting. (Read how parrots may have become too popular for their own good.)

Even so, other experts have speculated other causes were at play: Natural disasters, such as fires and floods, could have fragmented the birds' habitat, and they may have been exposed to harmful diseases spread by poultry.

Now a group of international researchers has sequenced the Carolina parakeet genome and concluded that the bird’s rapid decline shows human interference drove their extinction, according to a study published today in the journal Current Biology.

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It would take 50 million years to recover New Zealand's lost bird species

Date:  August 5, 2019

Source:  Cell Press

Half of New Zealand's birds have gone extinct since humans arrived on the islands. Many more are threatened. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on August 5 estimate that it would take approximately 50 million years to recover the number of bird species lost since humans first colonized New Zealand.

"The conservation decisions we make today will have repercussions for millions of years to come," says Luis Valente of Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. "Some people believe that if you leave nature alone it will quickly recuperate, but the reality is that, at least in New Zealand, nature would need several million years to recover from human actions -- and perhaps will never really recover."

The biodiversity observed today is the result of millions of years of evolutionary time, Valente explains. Extinctions caused by human activities erase this history. While the number of lost or threatened bird species often has been quantified, the broad-scale evolutionary consequences of human impact on island biodiversity rarely have been measured.

In the new study, Valente and colleagues developed a method to estimate how long it would take for islands to regain the number of species lost due to humans. They realized that New Zealand birds would be an ideal system to apply and demonstrate this new method.

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