Requiem for Bachman's Warbler
Last month, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced that it was proposing “to remove 23 species from the Federal Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants from the Federal Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants due to extinction.” Among the species selected for “removal”—the cold, bureaucratic term hiding a history of destruction and death—is the diminutive Bachman’s Warbler (Vermivora bachmanii), a beautiful, yellow-rumped, black-capped bird with olivaceous plumage, whose status will now, by official fiat, change from being the rarest songbird in the United States to being a non-existent one.
Sobering news indeed, though Bachman’s Warbler, easily overlooked, is hardly material for the front page. And it’s not quite final yet: technically, there is a 69-day public comment period during which the public can protest the decision. Yet, barring new evidence of a miraculous sighting, no one expects that little bird to claw its way back from being extinct to the dubious honor of just being endangered. Like other bird species recently declared extinct, Bachman’s Warbler, once at home in the bottomland forests of the Southeast and, during the winter, in Cuba, fell victim to what kills so many birds—habitat destruction (along with hurricanes in Cuba). Bachman’s Warbler was last seen in 1988.
Why lament the disappearance of just one species, however pretty? The history of our planet has been marked by extinctions. Even as we now worry about what Subhankar Banerjee has called a “full-scale winnowing of vast populations of the planet’s invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants,” the fact remains that so many organisms are still waiting to be discovered. Scoop up a handful of dirt, the entomologist E.O. Wilson once mused, and you are holding billions of microspecies yet unknown to humans. And what is death in nature anyway? Darwin, more than 150 years ago, quipped that it was no big deal: “It is generally prompt, …no fear is felt, and the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.” But do they?
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/20/requiem-for-bachmans-warbler/