The news from Mauritius has been more mixed. The kestrels are doing well and Carl believes that there could now be as many as a hundred of them in the wild, including twelve breeding pairs. However, the population of truly wild pink pigeons has dropped to fewer than ten. Some of the pigeons that have been bred in captivity are being released again. So far, they have escaped the hunters and appear to be doing well.
As for the echo parakeets, at least one of them has died since we saw them, though some of the others have been attempting to breed. In November 1989, Carl found a parakeet nest with three eggs inside. One of these mysteriously disappeared soon afterwards, so he decided to risk removing the others to the captive breeding centre for safe-keeping. Both eggs hatched successfully and the chicks are fit and well.
Perhaps most important of all (for non-ornithologists) the wild population of Rodrigues fruitbats has just passed the one thousand mark.
In contrast, after the radio series had been broadcast, we received a disturbing letter from a couple who had been working in China:
Dear Douglas and Mark,
We enjoyed the Yangtze dolphin programme – but listened with a touch of guilt! We recently spent three months working in a number of factories in Nanjing. We had a wonderful time with the people and ate well. To honour us when we left, one of them cooked a Yangtze dolphin, so really there should be 201.
Sorry about that.
Yours,
PS Sorry, it was two dolphins – my husband reminds me that he was guest of honour and had the embryo.
There is probably little hope of saving the dolphins in the Yangtze river itself, despite all the time and effort invested in protecting them. Perhaps in semi-captivity, in the reserve at Tongling and the new one at Shi Shou, they will stand a chance – though it could never be the same as being wild and free. Meanwhile, of course, the noise and pollution continue.
No one knows how many other species are this close to extinction. We don’t even know how many species of animals and plants there are altogether in the world. A staggering 1.4 million have been found and identified so far, but some experts believe that there are another 30 million yet to be discovered. It’s not surprising when you consider that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about parts of our own planet. Many animals and plants are disappearing even before we are aware of their existence, perhaps hidden away somewhere in the depths of an unexplored sea or in a quiet corner of a tropical rain forest.
And it’s not only the tiny, obscure creatures that have managed to escape our attention. There have been some exciting new discoveries in the rainforests of Madagascar, for example, since Douglas and I were there looking for the aye-aye in 1985. Field researchers have found two new species of lemur: one, called the golden bamboo lemur, has beautiful golden eyebrows, orange cheeks and a rich reddish-brown coat; the other has a shock of golden orange on the top of its head and has been named the golden-crowned sifaka.
Both lemurs are extremely rare – and virtually unknown. What roles do they play in Madagascar’s rain forests? Do they have any direct relevance to our own lives? What are the main threats to their survival? We don’t know. They could become extinct before the experts learn enough to save them. Wildlife conservation is always a race against time. As zoologists and botanists explore new areas, scrabbling to record the mere existence of species before they become extinct, it is like someone hurrying through a burning library desperately trying to jot down some of the titles of books that will now never be read
Extinctions, of course, have been happening for millions of years: animals and plants were disappearing long before people arrived on the scene. But what has changed is the extinction rate. For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century. But most of the extinctions since prehistoric times have occurred in the last three hundred years.