Birdlife
International
appeal.
Dear Birder,
Today we
announced
that Alaotra
Grebe is
officially
extinct on
the Red
List.
The Dodo is
the
undoubted
‘celebrity’
among
extinct
species with
its
depiction in
books,
cartoons and
the
well-used
expression
‘Dead as a
Dodo’. Less
well known
about the
Dodo is that
it heads up
a group of
single
island
flightless
birds that
became
extinct
either at
the hands of
man, or by
the
introduction
of predators
that came
along with
the arrival
of people to
their
islands.
More than
130 species
of birds
have become
extinct
since AD
1500, mostly
because of
human
actions...
When
BirdLife
publicises
news of
threat or
extinction
the first
question
posed by the
media will
be: “Why
should we
care?”
