IN t just about time t Edmond op tling do eventually in Isaae four oneius, far out in t    coast of Madagascar.

        tten sailor or sailor’s pet    of tless bird rusting nature and lack of leggy zip made it a ratible target for bored young tars on sion prepared it for tid deeply unnerving behavior of human beings.

        e don’t knoances, or even year, attending t moments of t dodo, so    kno tained a Principia or o    t more or less time. You o find a better pairing of occurreo illustrate ture of t is capable of unpigt secrets of t time pounding iin, for nopurpose at all, a creature t never did us any    eveely capable ofuanding o it as . Indeed, dodos acularlys on insig is reported, t if you y you o catc it to squao see .

        ties to t end quite ty years aftert dodo’s deator of t titution’s stuffed dodo ly musty and ordered it tossed on abo ime teuffed or ot, tried to rescue t could save onlyits    of one limb.

        As a result of tures from on sense,    noirely sure people suppose—aions by “uific voyagers, tings, and a fetered osseous fragments,” in t aggrieved eenturynaturalist rid. As Strid fully observed, ers and lumbering saurapods t lived intomodern times and required noto survive except our absence.

        So    lived on Mauritius,    not tasty, and-ever member of te s rapolations from Strid’s “ossements” and t remains s it tle over tall and about tance from beak tip to backside. Being flig ed onts eggs and cragically easy prey fs, dogs, and monkeysbrougo tsiders. It inct by 1683 and    certainlygone by 1693. Beyond t    not of course t    see itslike again. e knos reproductive s and diet,    made in tranquility or alarm. e don’t possess a single dodo egg.

        From beginning to end our acquaintance e dodos lasted just seventy years. tis a breaty period—t must be said t by t in our ory er of irreversible eliminations.

        Nobody knoe ructive    it is a fact t over t fiftyteo vaonishingly large numbers.

        In    America,    ty    genera    of    large    animals—some very large indeed—disappearedpractically at a stroke after ti beten andty toget aboutters of ter arrived -ional capabilities. Europe and Asia, ures.

        Australia, for exactly te reasons, lost .

        Because ter populations ively small and tionstruly moal—as many as ten million mammot to lie frozen in tundra of norties t be otions,possibly involving climate cural ory put it: “terial be to ingdangerous animals more often to—teaksyou    eat.” Ot may    criminally easy to catcralia and tim Flannery, “t knowenougo run away.”

        Some of tures t    acular and ake a littlemanaging if till around. Imagine ground slot could look into an upstairsortoises nearly t, monitor lizards ty feet long baskingbeside desert ern Australia. Alas, t. today, across types of really y (a metrior more) land animals survive: eleps, r for tens of millionsof years ive and tame.

        tion t arises is    times are in effect part of a siin event— we may well be.

        Acc to ty of Cologist David Raup, te ofextin o biological ory    every four yearson average. Acc to o calculation, in no level.

        In tralian naturalist tim Flannery, noruck by tle o kno mains, includiively ret ones. “o be gapsin t recorded at all,” old me w him in Melbourne a year or so ago.

        Flannery recruited er S, an artist and felloralian, and togetly obsessive quest to scour tions to find out, , and    four yearspig ty spes, old draten descriptions—ings of every animal te, and Flannery e t raordinary bookcalled A Gap in Nature, stituting t plete—and, it must be said, moving—catalog of animal extins from t three hundred years.

        For some animals, records    nobody imes for years, sometimes forever. Steller’s sea coure related tot really big animals to go extinct. It ruly enormous—anadult could reacy feet and ons—but ed    only because in 1741 a Russian expedition o be sures still survived in any numbers, te and foggy ander Islandsin the Bering Sea.

        ion uralist, Ge Steller, he animal.

        “ook t copious notes,” says Flannery. “er of itsals—to do ts texture. e    always so lucky.”

        teller couldn’t do self. Already ed to tin, it ogety-seven years of Steller’s discovery ofit. Many ot be included because too little is kno them.

        tless crake,at least five types of large turtle, and many ot to us except as names.

        A great deal of extin, Flannery and S discovered,    been cruel or on,but just kind of majestically foolis on a lonely rockcalled Stepempestuous strait bet kept bringing ratle birds t it .

        tifully sent some spes to ton. treed because tless less perc off at once for t by time t uffed museum species of tepless    no.

        At least en, it turns out,    mucter at looking afterspecies after t. take t. Emerald green,     striking aiful bird ever to live in Norts don’t usually venture so far norticed—and at its peak it existed in vast numbers, exceeded only by t t    by farmers and easilyed because it flocked tig of flying up at t), but turning almost at oo che fallen rades.

        In ten iury, Cedly empties a sgun into a tree inw:

        At eac tion of to increase; for, after a fes around ted near me, looking doered panions symptoms of sympatirely disarmed me.

        By tietury, tlessly edt only a feivity. t one, named Inca, died in tiZoo in 1918 (not quite four years after t passenger pigeon died in tly stuffed. And    it.

        is bot intriguing and puzzling about tory above is t Peale    did not ate to kill tter reason t itied o do so. It is a truly astounding fact t for t time t intensely ied in t likely toextinguishem.

        No one represeion on a larger scale (in every seerRot banking family, Re and reclusive fell,in Bugure of ually hree hundred pounds.

        ural ory and ed accumulator of objects. rained men—as many as four    a time—to every quarter of toclamber over mountains and    of neicularly t fleed or boxed up a back toRotate at tring, ants exively logged andanalyzed everyt came before tant stream of books, papers, andmonograpural ory factoryprocessed ure to tific archive.

        Remarkably, Roting efforts    extensive nenerously funded of teentury. t title almost certainly belongs to a slig also very isor named ing objects t    a large ogoing so sail time, pig up s, animalsof all types, and especially s    passed toDarudy.

        stific collector rettably leterested iingly vulnerable enviro Eart produced. Millions of years of isolation o evolve 8,800 unique species of animals and plants. Of particular ioRotinctive birds, often sisting of very smallpopulations iniremely specifiges.

        tragedy for many    t only distinctive, desirable, andrare—a dangerous bination in t of circumstances—but also often breakinglyeasy to take. ter koa fincrees, but if someone imitated its song it s coverat ond fly door er ts cousin t only one    forRotion. Altoget intensivecolleg, at least nine species of    it may have been more.

        Roto capture birds at more or less any cost.

        Ot or named AlansonBryan realized t    t tbird t ed t th“joy.”

        It    age to fatime ed ifit    bit intrusive. In 1890, e paid out over one ies for eastern mountain lions even t    turesin. Rigil tates tio paybounties for almost any kind of predatory creature. est Virginia gave out an annual collegesco    dead pests—and “pests” erpretedto mean almost anyt    gro as pets.

        Perrangeness of times te of ttle Bacive of ted States, ts unusually t its population numbers, never robust, graduallydil by toget unseen for many years.

        te birdis, in edlocations, came across lone survivors just t. t t t was ever seen of Ba’s warblers.

        to exterminate ralia, bountiesasmanian tiger (properly ture inctive“tiger” stripes across its back, until sly before t one died, forlorn and nameless, in aprivate    zoo in 1936. Go to tasmanian Museum today and ask to see t of to live into modern times—and all tograp surviving t rash.

        I mention all to make t t if you o look after lifein our lonely os, to monitor w is going and keep a record of w    che job.

        But remely salient point: . As far as ell,    t’s an unnerving t t and its    niganeously.

        Because    looking after t,    ly, or may soon, or may never, aivities    tins a . By to some six ’s extins of all types—plants, is, and so on as    to ed Natio of 1995, on t totalnumber of knoins in t four    sligly over 650 for plants— certainly aimate,” particularly o tropical species. A feerpreters textin figures are grossly inflated.

        t is,    kno    knoed doingmany of t knoions    ture.     t to do iton, and only one species of being capable of making a sidered difference. Edward O.

        ilson expressed it y in ty of Life: “One pla, oneexperiment.”

        If t is t o be o attain any kind of life in to be quite anac. As    only te also ty to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of omake it better. It is a talent we o grasp.

        e    tion of eminen a stunningly s time. Be is, people ivities—ed for only about 0.0001 pert of Eartory. But surviving foreven t little une.

        e really are at t all. trick, of course, is to make sure , almost certainly, han lucky breaks.
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