IN t just about time t Edmond op tling do eventually in Isaac Ne 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 tic and deeply unnerving behavior of human beings.

    e don’t knoances, or even year, attending t moments of t dodo, so  kno contained a Principia or one t  t more or less time. You o find a better pairing of occurrences to illustrate ture of t is capable of unpickingt secrets of t time pounding into extinction, for nopurpose at all, a creature t never did us any  even remotely capable ofunderstanding o it as . Indeed, dodos acularlys on insig is reported, t if you y you o catc it to squao see wwas up.

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

    As a result of tures from common sense,  noirely sure people suppose—aions by “unscientific voyagers, tings, and a fetered osseous fragments,” in t aggrieved eenturynaturalist rickland. As Strickland 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 Strickland’s “osseousfragments” and t remains s it tle over tall and about tance from beak tip to backside. Being flig nested onts eggs and cragically easy prey for pigs, 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 fiftytended to vanisenastonishingly large numbers.

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

    Australia, for exactly te reasons, lost no less t.

    Because ter populations ively small and tionstruly monumental—as many as ten million mammot to lie frozen in tundra of norties t be otions,possibly involving climate cural ory put it: “terial benefit to ingdangerous animals more often to—teaksyou can 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 metric tonor 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 single extinction event— we may well be.

    According to ty of Cologist David Raup, te ofextinction on Eart biological ory  every four yearson average. According to one recent calculation, inction no level.

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

    Flannery recruited er Scen, an artist and felloralian, and togetly obsessive quest to scour tions to find out, , and  four yearspicking ty specimens, old draten descriptions—ings of every animal te, and Flannery e t raordinary bookcalled A Gap in Nature, constituting t complete—and, it must be said, moving—catalog of animal extinctions 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 Commander Islandsin the Bering Sea.

    ion uralist, Georg 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 tinction, 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 extinction, Flannery and Scen discovered,  been cruel or on,but just kind of majestically foolis on a lonely rockcalled Stepempestuous strait bet kept bringing range little birds t it .

    tifully sent some specimens to ton. tor greed 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 andbeautiful 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 once to check on fallen comrades.

    In ten in teentury, Cedly empties a sgun into a tree inw:

    At eac tion of to increase; for, after a fes around ted near me, looking doered companions 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 itinterested o do so. It is a truly astounding fact t for t time t intensely interested in t likely toextinguishem.

    No one represented tion on a larger scale (in every sense) terRot banking family, Rotrange and reclusive fello tring,in Buckingure 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 and sent 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 nor tgenerously funded of teentury. t title almost certainly belongs to a slig also very isor named ing objects t  a large oceangoing so sail time, picking up s, animalsof all types, and especially s  passed toDarudy.

    scientific collector of  regrettably leterested in temptingly vulnerable environment Eart produced. Millions of years of isolation o evolve 8,800 unique species of animals and plants. Of particular interest toRotinctive birds, often consisting of very smallpopulations ining extremely specific ranges.

    tragedy for many  t only distinctive, desirable, andrare—a dangerous combination in t of circumstances—but also often breakinglyeasy to take. ter koa fincrees, but if someone imitated its song it s coverat once and fly door er ts cousin t only one  forRotion. Altoget intensivecollecting, 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, Neate paid out over one ies for eastern mountain lions even t  turesinction. Rigil tates continued to 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 birding ents, in edlocations, came across lone survivors just t. t t t was ever seen of Bachman’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 cosmos, 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, and ed tivities  tinctions a . By to some six ’s extinctions of all types—plants, insects, and so on as  to ed Nations report of 1995, on t totalnumber of knoinctions in t four  sligly over 650 for plants— certainly anunderestimate,” particularly o tropical species. A feerpreters textinction 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 considered difference. Edward O.

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

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

    e  tion of eminence in a stunningly s time. Be is, people ivities—ed for only about 0.0001 percent 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.