Hope, joy, absurdity and marvel: there is so much more to our world story than loss
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Version 0 of 1. Amid environmental tragedy, a hidden world of curiosity and wonder still exists. And in this, says Natalie Kyriacou, we can find glimmers of hope The last great auk, it is said, was strangled unceremoniously in its sleep in 1844. Plump and penguin-like, the great auk had survived for hundreds of thousands of years until humans discovered the utility of its soft down feathers, eggs and meat. Great auks mate for life, and it was on Eldey island in Iceland where the final pair on Earth met their fate at the hands of three fishermen who fell upon them. “I took him by the neck and he flapped his wings. He made no cry. I strangled him,” said the man who killed the last of a species. Extinction is rarely loud. It is a whisper, so quiet you might just miss it. The great auk wasn’t the first to fall to extinction at the hands of humanity, and it certainly wasn’t the last. So many more extinctions were to come, most of them going quietly, slipping softly into the annals of obscure scientific journals. The smooth handfish. The Yangtze river dolphin. The quagga. The Pyrenean ibex. The Chiriqui harlequin frog. The Rocky Mountain locust. This is the canvas upon which we etch our legacy today. Welcome to the Anthropocene: the reign of the human. Land and sea both bear the scars of humanity’s rule. Today, one million plant and animal species face extinction. Wild mammals make up less than 6% of the total mammal biomass on Earth, dwarfed by humans and livestock. That is, by weight, humans and their food dominate and devour the globe. The children born today face the very real possibility of a world emptied of much of its wildlife. This is a catastrophic legacy. The tales of human-driven wildlife extinction are of unfathomable horror: lands blackened with bodies of bygone species; birds falling from the skies, bodies slick with oil and sludge; great bears dancing raggedly in circuses; fish swollen with ingested plastics; wild apes prostituted; monkeys behind bars; insects disappearing from the skies; whales being cut, sliced, hauled and massacred off the back of ships; foxes lining coats and hats; koalas smouldering under blazing fires. Don’t look away. Because it’s not over just yet. Amid the tragedy, a hidden world of curiosity and wonder still exists. And in this we can find glimmers of hope. Across the globe, an amazing orchestra of animal life is playing out in wondrous, quirky detail, revealing the resilience and spectacle of nature. In the freshwater lakes of Mexico, newly hatched axolotls are feasting on their siblings’ limbs and revolutionising our understanding of nature’s regeneration abilities. These small salamanders, resembling eels with stumpy legs, possess the extraordinary ability to regrow lost limbs. Across the Atlantic, female great apes in Central Africa are delighting one another with an intimate bonding ritual, rubbing their clitorises together to strengthen their friendships and maintain peace within their communities. In the oceans, an adult humpback whale takes on the role of escort as he glides alongside a mother and her calf, protecting the vulnerable pair as they navigate the seas together for the first time. In the air, a monarch butterfly migration paints the sky with colour and wings as millions take flight on a 4,000km journey across the Americas in one of the most impressive phenomena in the animal kingdom. On land, the earth shudders as a thundering wildebeest migration pounds across the African plains in a spectacular blur of hooves, dirt and dust. As the 1.5 million-strong herd moves in search of fresh grazing pasture, it sets the stage for a breathtaking battle of survival, with lions, leopards, hyenas, zebras, gazelles and crocodiles joining the frenzied stampede. There is so much more to our world story than loss. Species once thought extinct are being rediscovered. Conservation efforts driven by passionate individuals and communities are restoring habitats and bringing endangered species back from the brink. The California condor, once nearly wiped out, is now soaring through the skies again thanks to dedicated conservation programs. The Arabian oryx, extinct in the wild by the 1970s, has been reintroduced to its native habitat, where it now thrives. The black-footed ferret, the Hawaiian crow and the Amur leopard are all testaments to what can be achieved when humanity turns its efforts towards regeneration rather than destruction. This hidden world, filled with the strange, the tragic, the beautiful, the profound and the delightfully odd, is shaping life on Earth and defining our individual lives. Finding these moments of wonder, while increasingly difficult, is not impossible. One of the pioneers of the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson, once said, “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” Against the backdrop of extinction and destruction, can tales of hope, joy, absurdity and scientific marvel provide the fuel for humanity to confront and reverse the extinction crisis? To reverse the nature crisis that we have created, a few ingredients are required. We must make the moral, economic and scientific case for action. We need to bridge social and political divides to connect with a diversity of people, each shaped by their own unique experiences, contexts and perspectives. We must invoke the art of storytelling to capture imaginations, blending the beauty and tragedy of nature to highlight both the urgency of the crisis and the potential for recovery. Our understanding of the crisis must be holistic, encompassing historical, political, economic and social dimensions. We need a visionary roadmap that outlines clear, actionable steps to address the nature crisis while inspiring hope and determination. And most importantly, we need to cultivate a sense of childlike wonder, curiosity and imagination for the natural world. It’s a tall order. And one that cannot be accomplished alone. Today, a five-foot-tall bronze statue stands solitary, overlooking the towering sea cliffs of the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland. The statue is of the now extinct great auk, a memorial to a species that was hunted out of existence. This lone figure preserves the legacy of one of humanity’s most defining acts on the planet: the destruction of life on Earth. In the silence of stone and bronze, the loudest truths are spoken. And the great auk – frozen in time – reminds us not just of what we have destroyed, but what we still have left to protect. It is true that the past has borne witness to disturbing and widespread exterminations of species, the great auk being just one among myriad fallen. But while the last breath of the great auk was snuffed out on Eldey island, a movement was under way. This was an era in which nature captured hearts and minds, an era in which the magic of the natural world was nourishing the work of prolific thinkers, uncovering infinite possibilities in natural, literary, philosophical and scientific inquiry. It was a time that saw the invention of the word “scientist”, the rise of the modern conservation movement and the early stirring of widespread public awareness of humanity’s impact on, and relationship with, nature. It was the age of Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species, of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the appreciation of nature, of Eunice Foote and the discovery of the warming potential of carbon dioxide. This was the age in which people gave language to curiosity, in which the seeds of ecology, evolution, conservation and environmental justice were taking root. So you see, for every tale of destruction, we can weave a tale of hope, regeneration and joy. Let this century be the one in which regeneration reigns over destruction and a new legacy is created for humanity This is an edited extract from Nature’s Last Dance by Natalie Kyriacou OAM. Out on 26 August through Simon & Schuster |