Return flights

Quote:

The news that the ivory-billed woodpecker — a bird thought to be as dead as the proverbial dodo — has been rediscovered, came as a welcome surprise to birdwatchers the world over. But many also wondered how a bird the size of a crow, with a call like a pack of hyenas, could have avoided detection for so long — even in the backwoods of Arkansas... Spix's macaw was the latest in a long line of exotic tropical birds to go extinct in the wild, as a result of habitat loss and the illegal cagebird trade. And it does not stop there. According to BirdLife International, almost 1,200 species of bird (more than 12% of the world's total) are currently at risk of extinction in the coming century, a huge increase on the 80 or so species that have died out since 1600.

Extinction is nowadays the norm, the "miracles" of founding species thought to be extinct the all too rare exception, that musn´t cloud view our of the big picture. And the big picture is that we are living during a time of great mass extinction which will leave damning evidence in the fossil record that will may be humanity´s most lasting impact on this planet.