Today I heard about a new International United Nations Day – Remembrance Day for Lost Species.
A local designer, Julia Peddle, created this graphic. She attended the permaculture workshop I led today at the Maleny Neighbourhood Centre and introduced us to the Day, at 12:30 we read through the list of Australia’s Recent Extinctions and tolled a bell for them. Many groups around the world were doing a similar thing – remembering the lost species from their region.
I knew that species extinction and habitat loss are huge issues, and I work consciously to preserve and renew habitat, but it still shocked me to hear the figure that three species are lost every hour – every hour!
I am marking 30 November in my diary for 2016 and will be organising an event to acknowledge the lost species and help bring more attention to this. Also to keep up to date with what is happening around the world about this project, I have connected with the Facebook group www.facebook.com/internationalremembrancedayforlostspecies/
The lost species are (some have more than one common name, or their aboriginal name included):
- Southern Gastric Brooding Frog, Southern Platypus Frog;
- Eungella Gastric-brooding Frog, Northern Gastric Brooding Frog;
- Mount Glorious Day Frog, Mount Glorious Torrent Frog, Southern Day Frog;
- Black-backed Bittern;
- Norfolk Island Ground-dove;
- White Gallinule, Lord Howe Island Swamphen, Lord Howe Swamphen;
- Lord Howe Gerygone, Lord Howe Island Gerygone;
- Norfolk Island Starling, Norfolk Starling, Tasman Starling;
- Robust White-eye;
- Tasman Booby;
- Norfolk Island Kaka, Norfolk Kaka;
- Paradise Parrot, Beautiful Parakeet;
- King Island Emu;
- Kangaroo Island Emu;
- Percy Island Flying Fox, Dusky Flying Fox;
- Thylacine, Tasmanian wolf, Tasmanian tiger;
- Central hare-wallaby, pukurl-pukurl;
- Eastern hare-wallaby, turatt;
- Toolache wallaby;
- Crescent nailtail wallaby, wurrung;
- Nullabor Dwarf Bettong;
- Desert rat-kangaroo, oolacunta;
- Broad-faced potoroo;
- Pigfooted bandicoot, boorda;
- Desert bandicoot, orange-backed bandicoot, iwurra, waliya;
- Lesser bilby, rabbit-eared bandicoot;
- White-footed rabbit-rat, white-footed tree rat;
- Short-tailed hopping mouse;
- Long -tailed hopping mouse;
- Big-eared hopping mouse;
- Darling Downs hopping mouse;
- Blue-grey Mouse, Blue-gray Mouse;
- Gould’s mouse, white-footed mouse, kurn-dyne;
- Lake Pedder Planarian.
- Lake Pedder Earthworm
This list was sourced from Endangered Species International. 2009. List of Recent Extinct Species (Since 1500AD). http://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org/overview.html