On the death of species

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

4.4 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2021

⏱️ ? minutes

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Summary

This week, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed taking 23 animals and plants off the endangered-species list — because none can be found in the wild. What this tells us about climate change, and things to come.

The ivory-billed woodpecker is officially extinct, along with 22 other species of plants and animals.

“Just having to write those words was quite difficult,” Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Amy Trahan told climate reporter Dino Grandoni, choking up. “It took me a while.”

The woodpecker was known as the “Lord God Bird” because it was supposedly so beautiful that anyone who saw it would blurt out the Lord’s name.

Grandoni said that some scientists think the Endangered Species Act came too late to save a lot of animals.

But maybe not all hope is lost.

“My inbox today, after publishing the story online, is full of photos from amateur photographers in their backyards of woodpeckers, asking me if this is the bird that people are saying has gone extinct,” Grandoni said. “This might spur some interest in people going on and understanding the birds and other animals that are still with us.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	I mean, I just want to say, this is not an easy thing that we have to do.
0:09.9	Nobody wants to do that.
0:11.5	Nobody wants to be a part of that.
0:13.9	Sorry.
0:15.2	Amy Trahan is a biologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
0:21.4	And she's talking about a report she wrote that was something like in obituary.
0:26.3	But it wasn't for a person.
0:28.1	It was for a bird.
0:32.7	And just trying to write those words was quite difficult to cry.
0:40.9	This obituary was about the ivory-built woodpecker, the bird that inspired the cartoon character
0:46.9	Woody the Woodpecker.
0:48.8	That woodpecker is about to be considered extinct, along with 22 other species.
0:58.6	From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports.
1:02.2	I'm Martine Powers.
1:03.8	It's Thursday, September 30th.
1:11.9	Officials are now declaring more species extinct in the U.S. than they have in the last 50 years.
1:17.7	And also that have gone extinct are the flat pig toe, southern Akron Shell, stirrup
1:24.5	shell, upling comb shell, green blossom, turgid blossom, yellow blossom, the fish we have
1:30.5	Skioto mad tom.
1:32.4	Dino Grandoni is an environmental reporter at the post.
1:35.7	He was on that Zoom call with Amy.
1:38.4	And he's been reporting on this alarming extinction rate of all these animals from the smallest
	...

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