Now, over to Oll Lewis, the CFZ ecologist (who also happens to be the bloke living in my spare room) who - every day - tells us about `Yesterday's News Today` with a bevy of bad puns....Whenever a species becomes extinct it is a truly lamentable occurrence. I often wonder, late at night when I’m having problems getting to sleep, if the last survivors of a species are aware of their plight; did the last woolly mammoth endlessly trudge the icy tundra looking for others, cheerfully thinking that he might find a mate the next day or did he ever truly accept there would be no more of his kind? Perhaps I’m anthropomorphosising a bit much but if a last survivor of a species was aware of his plight it would be truly tragic.
The tragedy is only compounded when it is human activity that caused the extinction. Humans have caused many extinctions; two that spring readily to mind are that of the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) and the great auk (Pinguinus impennis). Both species were huge in numbers until man started to hunt them intensively, but the story of the final demise of the great auk is a particularly sad one.
Ever since humans first encountered the great auk they hunted it, even as far back as 100,000 years ago; bones from great auk have been found in the remains of Neanderthal fires and the bird has appeared in a number of cave paintings. This predation was not a problem until the sixteenth century because the numbers taken by humans were easily eclipsed by reproduction. However, things were soon to change. Ships began to stop off at great auk breeding sites while en route to and from the Americas. At first these stops off would just be to replenish food stocks, but soon some ships would go as far as to herding hundreds of birds on board ship for needless mass slaughter.
The bird's feathers were in demand as well as its meat and many birds were probably killed for no greater reason than stuffing a rich mans pillow with its down or so its feathers could make a fetching decoration in a woman’s hat. The trade in the feathers and down of the great auk in Britain and Europe was so great it led to the near eradication of nesting sites on the east side of the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually the killing of great auks for their feathers was banned by Britain in 1794, but this was long after the species had started a terminal decline. A further blow came to the species on the west of the Atlantic when the eider duck was forced into near extinction and down collectors from North America switched their attention to the great auk in the late eighteenth century. The fact that great auk eggs were highly sought after by egg collectors did little to help the species’ long term survival prospects too, especially when the egg collectors found out that the great auks laid their eggs over a number of days so a collector could take considerably more eggs if he was prepared to wait around.The last great auk ever found in Britain came ashore on Stac An Armin, St Kilda, Scotland and was tried as a witch by locals. It ended its life in July 1840 tied up for three days and beaten to a bloody pulp by locals armed with sticks.
Around this time, a single colony of great auks survived on the small volcanic island of Geirfuglasker, which was near Iceland and was inaccessible to humans. Disaster struck in 1830 when an undersea volcanic eruption caused Geirfuglasker to sink beneath the waves. Most of the surviving birds made it to the nearby island of Eldey, which unfortunately was accessible to humans. When news spread of the great awks' presence on Eldey several museums commissioned collecting parties to bring back as many dead great auks as possible to add to their taxidermy collections; the birds would fetch a high price due to their rarity. On 3rd July 1844, less than ten years after the colony had been discovered, the final breeding pair was located. The last two birds were strangled just before the egg they had been incubating was smashed.
One last solitary great auk was seen after the murder of the last breeding pair and their unborn chick. The last great auk was seen on the Grand Banks of Newfoundand in 1852. I wonder if he ever questioned where all the others like him were or if he knew he was alone.
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