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18 Barbara Allen: Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds
54 Plays9 days ago
Author Barbara Allen discusses her work Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds (Reaktion Books, 2025). Through her style of writing animal biography, Allen creates space to honour and memorialise extinct animals. We discuss the tragic tales of the passenger pigeon, St Helena’s earwig, dusky seaside sparrow and thylacine. She recreates their presence and world through story.
Bio:
Barbara Allen was a nurse, then a school teacher, before studying to become an ordained minister in the Uniting Church in Australia. She has always been passionate about animals. Her previous books include Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds, Pigeon, Animals in Religion, Pelican and Broken Heart, Shared Heart, Healing Heart, a book about pet loss. She has been a minister in parishes, schools and aged care facilities. Barbara helped develop Australia’s first animal chaplaincy program at the Lort Smith Animal Hospital, in Melbourne. Recently widowed, she combines locum ministry with her writing ministry. She shares her home with her animal family: Harry, an elderly blind dog, Leaf an elderly cat, and several white doves.
Hosted and produced by Catherine Polcz with music by Carl Didur.
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Transcript
Introduction to Plant Kingdom Series
00:00:09
Speaker
I'm Katherine Poults and this is Plant Kingdom. Plant Kingdom is a conversation series about the sublime in nature and environment, featuring scientists, artists, researchers, and writers.
00:00:21
Speaker
We release two conversations each month and hear from people who have an intimacy with nature. We discuss their work, stories, and reflections from the field.
Exploring Extinct Animals with Barbara Allen
00:00:30
Speaker
Today's conversation is with author and Reverend Barbara Allen.
00:00:34
Speaker
In our conversation, we spoke about her book, Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds, which tells the story of 31 recently extinct animals. We spoke about ways to memorialize and honor these animals and how to recreate their world and presence through story.
00:00:51
Speaker
Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds is published by Reaction Books. Here's our conversation.
00:01:04
Speaker
Hi, Barbara. Thank you so much for speaking with me today about your beautiful your beautiful work, Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds.
Stories and Biographies of Extinct Animals
00:01:12
Speaker
It is a really beautiful and intimate work featuring the stories and biographies of 31 recently extinct animals.
00:01:19
Speaker
Can you tell us about this book and also what inspired you to to write this? ah Thank you and thank you for having me, Catherine. it's It's a pleasure. I suppose I write animal biography and I'd been looking at a couple of fossils that I have on my desk and I think I i was just thinking about where are they in the bigger picture? Not not so much them as a species. I had ah a cross-section of a mammoth tooth and I had ah a trollobite fossil on my desk and I thought, well, what what what what was that
00:01:52
Speaker
particular species like? what was that and What was the individual from that species like? and And knowing that they were extinct and wondering what that has meant for our world. And I've been working on a book, writing a book on pet loss and knowing how we memorialise our our animals and and how we have that deep connection.
00:02:10
Speaker
And then I wondered about not only other species and and wild animals, but what about extinct animals? How do we memorialise them? How do we remember them? And if we remember them, does that mean that we are more mindful and more protective of of endangered and threatened species? So that's probably what inspired me, that sense of loss. And also most of it was preventable and that that just is is so so sad but wanting to to perhaps be a voice of hope and say we we can do better. Yeah, thank you. I can see in this work the threads of so much of your work coming together. and that's so interesting about the trail light. I also have one.
00:02:52
Speaker
And it is like, yeah, when when you hold a fossil or an animal that seems so bizarre from what you know in your hand, it does really open up all of this curiosity too about like, can what can we understand about how they live? How do you take it from just this?
00:03:07
Speaker
image or this object and kind of recreate its world, which is something I think you really do in this book. And of course, you write about this in your book too, but the background is also the current extinction crisis, the sixth mass extinction that we're living in, whether we're facing
Understanding the Current Extinction Crisis
00:03:23
Speaker
I think there's estimates that are something up to 1 million animals and plants are at risk of extinction currently. And how do we even comprehend what that means? and And how do we look back at the loss and try to understand that loss to how, I guess, navigate us when we can still make decisions and have impact about what's happening? And and and it's it's one of those things when when i when I tried to work out, well, I can't write about everything. So then, therefore, I limited it to
00:03:51
Speaker
recent times because then we can see the human element there and and see what what what led to that but also i think it was that unconscious choice too that they were mainly species we had more information about but again it was that that's as you said that those numbers are horrific you know and and and they're only estimates really they you know they're not we can't say for sure how many and i just feel that that grief for our Our animal kin is is intense. And how, what what have animals been in in your life? This is not the first book that you've written about animals. What's the role of animals in your life?
00:04:32
Speaker
i've I've always grown up with animals, always had animals with me. my My mother always said to me, they can't open the refrigerator on their own. So we always fed our animals before ourselves. So I always had that role model.
00:04:47
Speaker
I can't imagine not having an animals in my life. I've always had dogs and cats or birds and fish, always always had animals with me. But for me, they teach me also to be a better human being.
00:05:00
Speaker
if If someone said, be be the person your dog thinks you are, and I thought, yep, they think you're the best. they They think you're the best thing on two legs. But I've always loved animals, always gravitated to animals. All my books have been, in a sense, animal biography.
00:05:17
Speaker
um So if I suppose if if you say, what do you write, I'd id probably say animal biography. um And then been very, very blessed by having the opportunities to do that. So they've enriched me.
00:05:29
Speaker
They've helped me in my own grief. They know my my feelings. You I just feel so enriched. So I feel as it know very, very blessed. and And I suppose that's part of the the pain I feel when I write this sort of book, that those animals are no longer there. Yeah.
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's the joy and the love is why there's the grief, right? They're kind of like opposite sides of the same coin. Yeah. And on ah on a somewhat more personal level or a different aspect of your life, as a reverend, you've worked for years at the Lortsmouth Animal Hospital in Melbourne, assisting with families who've lost their pets, and you've written a book about navigating pet loss.
Connection Between Pet Loss and Extinction
00:06:10
Speaker
Can you speak about your work about with on pet loss and kind of the connection between that and lost animals.
00:06:19
Speaker
I suppose I've always been fortunate. I've been one of those people who grew up with animals, always had animals in my life, couldn't imagine life without them. And when the opportunity came up to be appointed as a chaplain at ah at an animal hospital. It was like the great fit. but But I suppose I went there thinking everybody understood pet loss. And really, only when I went there and then when I, you know, when I left the position after five and a half years, I realised people still didn't really, some people didn't understand pet loss, didn't understand grief is grief. It's not about the species, it's about the bond. And and so I wrote that book.
00:06:58
Speaker
the road to try and say this is normal, to normalise that grief and to say this is grief like any other grief. It's about how we support each other, what we can do. And from there, I suppose while I was working on that, this idea came about the extinct species and how we we know we might talk about having prayers or or having burial services or whatever for our for our pets or our animal companions, but how do we acknowledge the passing of not only a wild animal, but an extinct species. So it it was sort of all in there together. And of course, composing eulogies, working with families about loss in their life is something that you also have had a lot of experience doing. And did that kind of inform how you wanted to write about the animals or or what you wanted to write about the animals?
00:07:51
Speaker
Yes, it did. I've had two placements in aged care and and my first career was as a nurse. So I suppose I've been with death and dying in a lot of my my working life. I conduct lots of funerals when when I was working in aged care. And for me, How do you write or how do you deliver a eulogy when someone might have lived for 95 years? You can't ever you can't ever know tell a whole person's story. So it's always ah about the the essence of a person. and and And I think I brought that to this book as well. What's the essence of that species? What what can i tell that that says something about it, knowing you can't tell everything, but taking the threads of of historical accounts and and biology and and trying to to make that uniqueness of each species. And as as I tried to do with with with humans, I mean, I'd always think if someone came to a funeral, I hope they realised that's the person we were talking about, that that was a person they knew. it wasn't just this general idea of of what a human life is like. So yes, I think it did inform. It did inform my my writing.
00:09:02
Speaker
You captured that In the title too, it's lost animals, but also their worlds, the disappearing worlds. How did they experience it? And towards the end of the introduction,
The Concept of Umwelt and Animal Perception
00:09:12
Speaker
um you introduce introduce introduce us to a really fascinating term and idea of the umwelt. Can you tell us about umwelt and kind of what it brings to the table when we're contemplating and trying to understand in animal? Yeah.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yes, i i came i came across the term while I was doing my research and I thought, wow, it was just so succinct and it was just lovely to have this term. Jacob von Oek School, U-E-X-K-U-L-L, a Baltic German biologist, came up with this term to talk about an animal's environment or their surrounding world. So he was really saying that an animal has its own world, it has its own sensory environment, and it's shaped by that as we are shaped by our own worlds and environments. It has its evolutionary history and its experiences, and we will never understand totally how an animal feels or or interacts with with its its kin or with a wider environment. But that's important to acknowledge.
00:10:19
Speaker
And Gary Kowalski, who is a theologian and very informed by the animal writer and philosopher at the late Tom Reagan, said that animals not only have biologies, they also have biographies.
00:10:37
Speaker
And I thought, it yes, we we often forget that. you know but we We'll talk about an animal's makeup, its anatomy, how it really you know relates to in in its habitat, but it also has a biography. And there's another term, inner welt, which means it's inner world. And like us, you know, i we assume or or we can assume that they live in both, which which is rather nice to have an outer world and an inner world as as we humans do. Yeah, it's so interesting. and Environment doesn't really, it doesn't capture it, right? Like we live,
00:11:15
Speaker
And the magpie that lives on my street and me and on on the same street live totally different existences in what we notice, where we go, what we think.
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's a little bit like, I mean, they're grounded. our Our animals, like ourselves, we're grounded in history. We experience history. We have emotions. and And, you know, some things we think, oh, yes, you know, this this animal bonds with with its species and this, you know, the elephants grieve and this happens and this happens. But we will never know that the wealth of it. We will never be able to say this is exactly what happens. But we do know from this that – Descartes' idea of animals as automata is false. you know' They're they're not robots. they're not you know They have feelings. they have and know do and that The question is not do animals think but do they feel and they do. I think we've got this extra knowledge now and and and insight but what do we do with that? i I was thinking about this yesterday um and it's almost like we've lost, we can we need to go back to how we were as children. you know As children, but you know we imagine, you know does that animal have have a have a family? you know does you know Where does that crow go or the magpie on your street? Does it have a have ah have a family? and you know Do they talk together? And and perhaps maybe you know we need to go back to that that way of viewing things and going back to You know, a more childlike um wonder of of the world where everything is possible and not limiting it to what we can see and observe and is scientifically proven. Yeah, I think it's so interesting going down the street or into the bush with my sons. They notice so much. And then just thinking about how they play too He loves...
00:13:09
Speaker
to play with reptile toys. But like he embodies the reptile, you know, like he's playing with it from its perspective, yeah whether, you know, there's a lot of attacking going on, but they also get invited to other birthday parties from the lizards and stuff too.
00:13:27
Speaker
But yeah, there's more mystery kind of in this idea of Umwalt and the biography versus the biology. But writing from the animal's perspective, so for for each of these 31 species, you...
00:13:40
Speaker
You write about its life or its loss from the perspective of an animal. And can you talk a bit about that that process and why you made that decision? and Was that challenging to do?
00:13:52
Speaker
i i don't think ah I did it consciously at the beginning. And then i in the end, I realized I was writing all in the first person. i think that's so interesting. That is just how you naturally were starting to write about it because I think it's it builds a lot of empathy with the animals when you're reading about them. And it changes the story from, you know, what we did to it to what happened to me.
00:14:18
Speaker
and and and, and I mean, for some, you some, you could say this is the last one in captivity, or this is probably the last wild one. So for some, there you know, that, And some had been named like Martha, the last passenger pigeon. But did naming actually save the species? And the answer is no. no we know There were a number that had names on them and and even the name Endling at the end, which is, ah you know, ah you know it's it's such a heartbreaking word to think you are the Endling, you are the last of that species. The last individual, yeah. Which is very, very...
00:14:55
Speaker
confronting in that sense to so to have that word of it I mean because it sounds like this lovely little word endling and then you think what no but that means the end that you are the last individual of that species or subspecies.
00:15:07
Speaker
And I wanted to look at a handful of the animals that you feature in detail and talk about some of their stories in more detail starting with the passenger pigeon which has come up already it's an animal probably most people are familiar with i think it's a medium-sized pigeon up to 40 centimeters long so actually sorry medium-sized bird but quite a big pigeon it lived in north america from the midwest to the eastern seaboard and those beautiful deciduous forests and all the way up from texas to canada so it had a huge range and
00:15:43
Speaker
It's most famous for its sheer abundance, right? All the records of people writing that the flocks, it was like an eclipse. It darkened the sky and it took the flock took three days to pass. And kind of the sheer shock of an animal that is so abundant could go extinct in decades.
00:16:03
Speaker
It's unbelievable. But can you can you talk about what what was your interest in the in the passenger pigeon and why we included it? I mean, I'd written a book on just called Pigeon, I think in 2009, and Passenger Pigeon came up in in that book. And and i think I remember being struck at the time that just how how one of the most abundant land birds on earth, which was, I think, between 25 and 40% of the total bird life in the USA, could disappear.
00:16:37
Speaker
mean, and I think that's the bit where you think, okay, if you if you might have you know a couple of thousand left of a species, maybe there's ah you know a danger that they will become extinct. But when you look at something in in the billions to to be nothing and you think, how did that happen? And I suppose ah suppose that was a riddle for each each of the animals ah and birds I looked at and and the the insects I looked at.
00:17:04
Speaker
Why did this happen? How could this happen? And to have such an abundant bird to be from that number to to none, is ah just astonishing. And and as she said, those flocks could be so dense that you know they would take three days you know to pass over. And and yeah even the word passenger pigeon comes from the words of you know the French to pass by.
00:17:25
Speaker
Even the sound, you know that there are records that it sounded like a gale or a storm or or even little sleigh bells if there there is a smaller flock. So you go from that to complete silence. And I and i think that's the part that I found really hard. I mean, so you look at that and you look at the abundance and you say, okay, there are a lot of birds, but how did it then decrease, you know, within 50, 60 years to to nothing um due to guns, due to what was then started up as a sport of trap shooting, up up to 50,000 passenger pigeons in in a you know weekly trap shooting competition. I mean, that wasn't unusual. And I mean, you look you and you have to sit back and you say 50,000.
00:18:11
Speaker
500 or more by a single shooter a day. And you think that's, you know, and that's one competition. There there was one the competition because there were so many birds, the competition was to shoot more than 30,000. And I look at those numbers and I think, how how could people not not wonder about that or or question that? and And then sold for food. I mean, they were a ready food supply and and then sold the invention of of the railroad. So the railroad, the trains could get to ah an area very quickly, transport back to the large cities. So you know there a nesting place in New York, would um new New York State would yield 1.8 million passenger pigeons. In in New York City, 18,000 were being sold each day for a time.
Case Studies of Human Impact on Extinction
00:18:58
Speaker
know So you just look at at at how many. so So there was that. So there was the railroads, there was the you know the the gun, there was the the introduction of of sporting venues. So when the wild ones started to decline in the 1870s and 80s, yes, it was due to hunting, but it was also due to forest depletion. Areas were were opened up for for open fields for agriculture. So those those forests that the pigeons needed for their food sources, particularly acorns, were gone. And there's also that
00:19:30
Speaker
At the time, they didn't know, but we we're looking now and saying how many of the creatures are needed to be viable for social organisation, for breeding, all of those things.
00:19:42
Speaker
There were protective laws, but they came in too late. And that's that's also ah quite a common record through some of the species I looked at. And then we end up with the last one, that we captive one we know of called Martha. the 1st of September 1914 as the day the last captive passenger pigeon died. And and I think that there there's was there was some compassion shown, especially near the end, because even when Martha was going to to be dissected and and and the autopsy performed, the person who performed that chose to leave her heart in there, did not want to touch the heart So so I found that very moving that, you know, at the end, I mean, like I just can't imagine how you would feel handling the last of a species.
00:20:37
Speaker
And just a species like the passenger pigeon, so visible in its environment, its extinction seems like a a campaign. What a big industry there was around killing them. um The next animal I want to talk to you about is quite a different story.
00:20:56
Speaker
which is the St. Helena's earwig, which was very moving to read about in your your book. ah but Not everything holds the same weight or place in our imagination or culture like the passenger pigeon might have. Can you can you tell us about the earwig?
00:21:15
Speaker
Yes, and and and it's interesting what you just said there, Catherine, because they're not the the pinups for conservation, are they? The earwig, as you said, you found out some fascinating things, that they were excellent mothers. They were really protective of their young and they would clean them and they would lie on top of them to shelter them from the cold and from predators and feed them on regurgitated food for for quite a while. So that the the nymphs of the earwig was They were cared for for a long, long time. They were quite interesting in that this island of St Helena, it's it's the only place where these were found. They were the world's largest earwig. The the largest one found was 7.6 centimetres or three inches. They lived in ah sort of isolated areas on on this small island. which was only 16 kilometres long. So it's you know a small place, even though they they didn't take up much room, they lived under rocks. Once humans came in and and settled the island, they used those rocks for construction material, they they mined them. So they again, the same story, destroyed much of their habitat. Removing the rocks, the native plants, there was soil erosion. So when when they would lay eggs, they would make little chambers in the soil. So that that was gone. They were vulnerable, now exposed to light and wind and easy target for predators. And most of those, again, the same story introduced by the humans who had gone there to settle.
00:22:43
Speaker
So again, you've got the cattle and the cats and the dogs and the donkeys and the mice and the rabbits. So so their story kept going even in 1962 when two ornithologists discovered some of their pincers amongst fossilised bird bones so that, you know, they were sort of brought to the fore again and in ah in a way you could say but you know they could have been saved but uh the last one was seen in 1967 but um i suppose this poor little ear well not little large largest ear these are the flag stuff you know the endemic invertebrates and uh even even just recently in 2023 the museum on the island didn't have a ah specimen and
00:23:33
Speaker
and it was a specimen was repatriated to them from the from the African Museum, so at least there is one left on on the island itself.
00:23:43
Speaker
But again, it's about, I think in here it's it's habitat destruction, it's not knowing enough about what happens when you alter an an environment, but also ah how do How do we protect all species, not just the ones that we we feel more drawn to?
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that was so really interesting. And just the act of, i mean, I thought about it a ah lot after the out there just the rocks were removed because who hasn't lifted a rock and then seen an insect and then just their cruelty of losing all of their rocks. They have nowhere else to go.
00:24:17
Speaker
then Yes, and yeah and and we don't think that through. We think, oh, yes, we've got oh here we are. We've got you know a source of materials. We'll take them without thinking because they're little. We you know you might see one. we don't sit know They're underground. They weren't all shot in mass herds. that yeah Yes, that's that that's right. you know And and and would it have would it have made a difference if if we knew what good mothers they were? I don't know. but i thought it was so beautiful like in such a way to connect with the airwig and their fight for survival and how they care for their young. And yeah, I was surprised by that. I never knew that. And that detail made them, for me, much, much like come to life in a totally different way.
00:25:03
Speaker
well Well, that idea of cleaning and grooming them and making sure that they weren't, you know, going to get infected by fungi, which they were susceptible to. And and that's when you come back to that sense of umbel. What does it mean about having the you know, having an idea of their environment and then of their inner world as well. and And I think we get a little bit of that when we see those sorts of details. You know, we know, yep, they were great mums, you know, that's that's a ah lovely thing to to to remember about them.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah. And how did you choose which species to include? Was there like a huge short list of species that you were interested in were there ones that you've just collected and were interested in over the years how did you um so some I was very attracted to and they were sort of givens like the dodo because I had looked at the dodo when I when I had done the book on pigeon and the great orc is is always one that makes me cry but um and the dusky seaside sparrows another one and the thylacine and there were ones that that that I thought yes they they have to be in but other ones just just kept coming when I'd be reading about you know what species would become extinct and and I'd read a little bit more and i think oh I want to do that and we need to do more on that or there's not much written on this and So, some some species had ah had a lot written on them and others were just little bits and and and or very recent and I thought, yes, that needs to go in or, yeah. So, it was partly planned but then I'd just let things take its course, yeah.
00:26:39
Speaker
um Another one I wanted to speak to you about is the dusky seaside sparrow. Can you tell us about this bird? This this one, i look, I was just really touched by, I mean, all the stories I found touching, but this one just went a little bit deeper, I think, because it was just that just a little, you know, we we we see sparrows, don't we? And meet we, you know, we We always expect to see sparrows. And this this one lived on the east coast of Florida on Merritt Island, 16 kilometre radius and probably believed to be the most restricted habitat of any North American bird.
00:27:17
Speaker
So that was a very small area of habitat. And it had salt marshes and it woven grass stems to make these nests which floated above the mud. And the females, again, bit like the ewe, were very protective of the young. And instead of flying off from their nests that were on the mud, if a predator was watching, they'd know exactly where to go. They would actually just wade off. So they didn't actually fly off. They just waded off so they weren't drawing attention to particular place where their eggs were, which I thought was very clever. So they would always remain close to the nest. They were demoted from a full species to a subspecies and maybe when perhaps when an animal is demoted they're not given the same attention. I don't know that that was sort of a one of those things that that had a question mark. Does that mean there's a decrease in funding and conservation concern if it's a subspecies rather than a full species. But I suppose with their story, it's so connected to the human story with the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral and Walt Disney World in Florida. And that, I think, was what – it just stunned me because, you know, we know that during 1950s, I think 58 to 62, around that sort time, NASA acquired all of North Merritt Island and most of Merritt Island to establish the John F. Kennedy Space Centre on Cape Canaveral. And that was next to Merritt Island. But one good thing at that time was that there was an agreement between NASA and the US Fish and Wildlife Services to make Merritt Island, to create a wildlife refuge, which I think, you know, at that time, that was pretty insightful. So on the land that wasn't needed for space programs, at least the birds could be there.
00:29:16
Speaker
But again, you know um we have something great on one hand, but on another, it's an area that has lots of mosquitoes. So DDT and other poisons and chemicals were were introduced to get rid of the mosquitoes, which of course led to great toxicity, reduced the breeding pairs of of the the sparrows from 2,000 to 600. And not only that, it got into the food chain and also produced thin shells and a decrease in being able to reproduce.
00:29:47
Speaker
So, i mean, we're learning more and more about the dangers, but just seem to be at that time to try and get rid of the mosquitoes. Area then, when when they saw that the you know the the chemicals weren't really reducing mosquitoes in the way they wanted, they ended up flooding the area to try to eliminate the mosquitoes. But of course, again, that destroyed the habitat of the dusky seaside sparrow. They had nowhere to move to. Their their permanent habitat again was altered. New predators moved in, such as snakes and rodents and raccoons. So the young and the eggs were eaten. Loss of habitat and nesting grounds. And then to top it all off, a road was built on top of the marsh, so that there was a direct road to between Kennedy Centre to Walt Disney World. So on top of their habitat, the rest of the land been drained, and then what was left of the land was drained and sold off as real estate. So that was it.
00:30:45
Speaker
know that you know it it was it was... which is really sad. I mean, in 1966, they were declared an endangered species. And in that same year, the US Congress passed the Endangered Species Act. And they were on that first list of threatened and endangered species. But ah they continued to decline. And by 1977, there were pairs. hard was but nineteen seventy nine down to thirteen but what what was really had was ah was ah ah
00:31:16
Speaker
fire that was near the the refuge that was lit by a ranger and all all of those hectares, 850 remaining hectares were incinerated. The following spring only 11 sparrows were counted and ah no pears were left. So once you haven't got a pear you can't do anything. I mean there's only ah a small scrap of that salt marsh left and and people did try to save them. I mean we need to to also credit that. I mean they The last six individuals were caught and banded. They were given names by colours, you know, green, orange, blue, white, red and yellow. And most of them were found and brought into captivity.
00:31:56
Speaker
They were all male, so there's no way that there could be another another one bred.
Conservation Efforts and Misconceptions
00:32:01
Speaker
they And they were taken, the last four were taken in 1983 to Walt Disney World where they had a sanctuary area to be crossbred with the Scott Seaside Sparrow, which isn't actually one of the closest um relatives. So well it wasn't going to work. They did end up with a few hybrids, but they died. And the last one, which was Orange, um died.
00:32:28
Speaker
on the 17th of June 1987. So that we can say would was when the last, probably the last of them had died. and you know We look back and say, well, extinction was solely due to loss of habitat and pesticides. It wasn't due to predators. It was due to habitat and pesticides. And it didn't even – I mean, the thing that – I get a little bit annoyed about, you know, what's worthy of attention and what isn't. i mean, it it didn't even rate a death notice in in Audubon, the the prominent journal of of the you know National Audubon Society. It didn't even rate a a mention – But it did did um mean a song was written about it by Ron Vaughan, One Lonely Sparrow, which he dedicated to to the the one called Orange Band. So, um I mean, it has created created something. But it I think just that sense of space travel, ah Walt Disney, and you think and that's what really –
00:33:36
Speaker
Create this environment Where you know there was there was no way It was going to survive with all all those things Thrown against it which is so sad So sad It's very yeah very sad it lost its home And then you know what NASA and Disney World mean to our culture? Like it just... That's right.
00:33:57
Speaker
The happiest place on earth. I'm thinking, I don't think so. I don't think it was. Fantasy. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And and and new new frontiers, you know, and I'm thinking, we don't know about that frontier here, you know, we don't know enough about. how precious it is yes yes yes we don't have to go and space we can actually look what's here and and discover these beautiful creatures and how do we look after them and what you know it's not always about what they mean mean for you know mean for our our livelihood it's about just Accepting that we have these wonderful jewels that are part of creation, that, you know, part of our family. and Stranger than fiction. Like, that's so sad to think about Orange Band being on display in Disneyland on top of where it lived and and how recent it is. i listened
00:34:53
Speaker
On YouTube, there's a ah video of the call of the sparrow, and it's so sad just to think how close, it you know, how close temporarily in time we are to it being alive, being in its marshes.
00:35:08
Speaker
very Very sad. And I guess, and and and I listened to that to the recording of of the song, and it just it just makes you so so, you know, that's a sound we'll never hear except on a recording. Yep. Yeah, and something about the sparrow being, it is an ordinary bird. Like the loss of just all those ordinary animals that play their role, that make the world for something so grand. It's sad. In that section, I wanted to to read this quote from Brian Sharp that you included, who he's a former biologist that was stationed at Merritt Island. And he said that it's been suggested that you might not be missed to think that a necklace would not miss one of its pearls or a song, one of its notes.
00:35:51
Speaker
Neither this spring nor ever again will your exuberant performances appear on nature's stage. And I thought that was just a beautiful way to kind of encapsulate the completeness of the puzzle of how every creature lives and fits into its environment. and And the preciousness of it, you know? Yeah, yeah.
00:36:09
Speaker
And I guess like every story is... sad right as there's no happy endings no no happy endings no and I guess how did you get through that I think writing about them it is such a way to memorialize and remember them but was that part of the process of helping you go on like the paying them attention or how did you i think it was I mean i and i I suppose by finding out some of the things that you know that
00:36:41
Speaker
that caused it made me think, oh okay, no this is something that can be avoided. and ah But also knowing there are no happy endings and i suppose knowing that we've got so many species that are endangered and threatened but hoping hoping that by getting the right facts and animals being valued for for who they are rather than having um our point of view foisted on them. I mean, i i just just just as ah as an aside, the the thylacine, which which wasn't a wolf, which wasn't a tiger, which didn't actually kill sheep, its its jaws, only only after extinction did they actually do the research and find out what it was capable of doing and and not doing. and
00:37:32
Speaker
you know to be able to know find out it could not have killed the sheep. It it was not a a predator in that sense. It was just human human greed to want that land in in Tasmania and a whole lot of lot of political factors there. so I hope that when we look at a species, we look at the species the threatened species, ones that need protection, and say,
00:37:54
Speaker
what what what is the best what's best practice here so how how do we look at the care of the world how do we yeah it I mean I look at that pearl necklace um analogy and I just think yes once you lose them all what what are you left with you're not left with much you're left with just a string and we we want to look ah it's so easy to look away right but yes there's there's one last animal that is a is is a sad one, one of our probably the most famous extinct recently lost animal in Australia, the thylacine, which does live on in mythology and story and is very present in Tasmania. But can can you, i guess, talk a bit about your your interest in the thylacine and what it was like for you to to research and write from its perspective?
00:38:46
Speaker
I think it was, I think for us for Australians, it it is one of those creatures that we heard about, but but I grew up knowing it as the Tasmanian tiger. it's It's interesting that now it's, you know, gone back to, you know, thylacine, which which is good because it it was never a tiger. and and And it was a little bit like the platypus, which is sort of made up of lots of different bits of animals, it you know, seems to be a bit like that. And and the same with the thylacine, it's got a, a head of a wolf, stripes of a tiger, tail of a kangaroo um and the pouch of a possum. So it's it's a little bit like, you the Australian marsupial is is quite interesting. But being a marsupial, it I think that was part of the part of its decline because naturalists of the 19th century saw marsupials as inferior, almost like a relic and that they were destined to die out. So they were also viewed
00:39:37
Speaker
being in that sort of way of viewing them, they were seen as primitive, slow or stupid. And therefore, in a sense, it didn't matter if they weren't protected or looked after you know, they were destined to die out. And I think that's one of the things that I find really hard looking at the thylacine or looking at any of marsupials to look back and say, well, they weren't given the same value, dignity as any other creature. and not to be studied until after extinction. Well, it's a bit late. All the wrong facts about them, as I said earlier, they didn't kill hoarded species. They didn't have jaw and the teeth that wolves had. But what really was a downfall was poor stock management, poor soil politics, as I said earlier. Van Diemen's land company were sort of shareholders, stakeholders for English businessmen. So they They looked after this land for them, but with the poor soil and there was a bitter winter in 1829, unskilled workers, hundreds of animals had died due to mismanagement and they needed, you know, someone to blame. And sadly, the excuse was the thylacine was blamed, which then introduced private bounties. And by 1909, more than 2,000 had died bounties.
00:41:02
Speaker
or being killed because of a bounty on their head. That's a bit that that makes me so angry. These were were were not true facts and new research has come out, but it's too late. It's too late. and There was also disease, introduced diseases and their immunity systems were low. But if they were meant to be this fierce, I mean, there there are records of farmers having them as pets.
00:41:26
Speaker
You wouldn't have you wouldn't have ah a fierce animal as a pet. In one zoo, one of the psilocines was often led around on a lead and it was the zookeeper's favourite animal. Well, you know, it's hardly going to be a fierce animal, is it, if it's going to be able to be put on a lead and led around. And I suppose the bit that really concerns me was that ah Benjamin, which was the the last in captivity to die on the 7th of September, 1936, purely its death was due to neglect. it It hadn't been let back inside on a cold winter's night and it did and it and it died of exposure.
00:42:01
Speaker
But the bit that that really gets me, Catherine, is that in 1966, so we're talking 30 years on, and after that last thylacine in captivity had died, the Tasmanian government set up sanctuaries to protect them.
00:42:14
Speaker
I mean, there's nothing there was nothing there. There was nothing there. But 30 years it took and it was it was too late. But as you said, it's it's it's created... a tourist trade. it's It's on the Tasmanian coat of arms. you know, this animal that was thought of as as ah a predator, it lives on in the public psyche. and So it's not seen as this monster.
00:42:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it's not seen as the monster any anymore, but it's it but it's the part of that psyche. And I think, well, it could have been there. And and when I saw the thylacine at the Tasmanian Museum, it you know, ah you just want to weep, you know, this beautiful creature that was once there. And the date of its death for Benjamin is when we have National Threatened Species Day in Australia. So it it lives on, but not in a way that that it should be living on.
00:43:08
Speaker
You know, that one I just feel, yeah it it was made a victim and it was it was made the victim for human mistakes and and suffered as a result and and now we'll never never hear it.
00:43:21
Speaker
and And it's so recent and I was visiting a number of years ago in one of my parishes. There was an elderly man from Tasmania. he He'd been a ah son of ah a logger.
00:43:34
Speaker
So he'd been out camping and you know um with his dad quite a lot. and i And as I went to to leave um after the visit, I thought, I'll just ask. I'll just ask. This is before I even thought about writing this book. And I said, oh, by the way, did just it did you ever see so you a thylacine?
00:43:56
Speaker
And he looked at me and he said, i didn't see one, but I heard them night after night. And I thought, oh, you know, and I just, you know, just to just to feel that, you know, you you'd heard that bark and and, you know, you were one of the last to to to hear that, you know. i just it said It sent chills up my spine. It really did. I thought, wow, to to be able to say, yes, you you heard a thylacine's bark. Yeah, so so much. I think that just the lack of respect and regard for the thylacine and it's life that you can't make up to it.
00:44:32
Speaker
You can't make it up to it after it's extinct, that we feel so differently about it now. It's so sad. And those reserves, like it's hopefully... other species will benefit from the reserves for the thylacine. but right I know. I mean, that's that's know that's that's the only way I can look at it because it's otherwise it's just so sad and and and you think, yes, people go out looking for them and all of that and yeah lovely idea and maybe there's some hybrid, but you didn't it shouldn't have to be. They should be there. yeah we've We've lost it forever.
00:45:10
Speaker
It's a loss. Yeah, I've seen in the Australian Museum just down the road, they have a they have a thylacine on display and they have the ah part of the pelvic bone of a dodo and being in front of those specimens is really powerful. And and I think it's it's it's seeing them and then realizing it's not the real thing, right? Like it's Yeah, or or or thinking, why? i remember ah i was in London in in February and I'd gone to the Natural History Museum and had gone through, I thought I'll go to their gallery of, of I think they call it the Jewels or i was a special gallery anyway, and I thought I'll just just have a quick look through there. And i then ah walked through and I came face to face with ah with a great organ and I'd forgotten it was in there. I think I would have avoided it yeah yeah rather than, and I just burst into tears because I just thought, you know, that you shouldn't be confined to to being a skin, you know, taxidermied specimen in in a museum. We should be able to to know you're out there. And, you know, it's that sort of thing where, and later in the day I went down to, I think it was the, University of London, they have a um a museum and there was a quokka in there and part of a dodo. And again, they're thinking, oh, you know, it's, yeah, but it's just the skin. It's just the outer part. It's just their shell. It's not them. and i And I think that's the sad part too. You think, you know, we'll never,
00:46:48
Speaker
know that they're out in the wild and and doing their thing and living their life and the inner and outer life. And that's, I mean, that's the experience of this work too, right? It's giving us a space.
00:47:02
Speaker
You're creating a space for us to mourning group, which is very difficult and You know, even in our families and in the human world, it's very hard for a lot of people to talk about grief, have the language for it. And then you take that to the plant world and pet world and animal world. It's something that's very challenging. why is it critical to to sit with the grief and to memorialize these species?
00:47:33
Speaker
i think I think people, as you said, ah ah are uncomfortable with death anyway. And so if you don't if you don't mention it, it won't happen. and i and i think that And maybe that's part of the concern with animals. Maybe it's it's all too hard. you know if if If we look at one, then we know know others are ah dying out or or the world is changing and we need to do something about it. Maybe maybe it's all too hard. But I you know i think You there are a number of artists and sculptors and people who are trying to bring to the public's attention that let's let's do something before it's too late. um i mean, I was lucky enough to be invited to write a ah liturgy on on on on that. And so I did write a um so ah a liturgy or service that can be used for for mourning, endangered or extinct species, you know, to help um groups that you know if if they want to to use something like that. um to give words to to how we're feeling.
00:48:31
Speaker
And I think that's it. I mean, I suppose that's what I've done. I've created created a body of work in the book and in the liturgy that people can use, hopefully, in some way. And that's that's um that's right that's why I wrote it, really, I think, to...
00:48:48
Speaker
um Yeah, and I think we have to have that element of hope. you know Otherwise, we'll be ah overwhelmed and, in a sense, be paralysed and then do nothing. um so so to So to mourn can also be a way to to gather that, you know, you've you know you've you've done, and and and it's an act on behalf of some someone else or some yeah know another creature. And therefore, you're owning that creature. You're you're acknowledging that they lived, acknowledging our our our our sin, if you want to call it that, or our neglect, and to say, well, we we can do better.
00:49:22
Speaker
let's move Let's move on and do better. And that that's what I hope, yeah.
The Role of Storytelling in Memory Preservation
00:49:28
Speaker
I wanted to read um ah passage from the liturgy you wrote, which is very beautiful. And you wrote, how do we honor, remember through story? Words help us to remember, to reassemble the creature, the species in our minds and within our hearts, to be given a taste of their story. Even it be a crumb, a morsel is enough because no one, when they have died, can be fully remembered.
00:49:53
Speaker
No one knows everything about someone else or about a creature or species. A taste, though, can change us. Storytelling may prompt one to move forward. When we hear about an extinct species, we may mourn, remember, and hopeful hopefully be pushed into action, empowered to try to save endangered creatures so that they can still inhabit this earth.
00:50:17
Speaker
Very... beautiful and I think captures a lot of your philosophy. i think, thank you for reading that because because to me, what I should have said at the beginning was I'm a storyteller and and and it's telling their stories. It's almost like we know we gathered around the fire you know from long ago, we tell our stories and and for me, I'm a storyteller, bottom line. So i wanted to tell those individual stories. i Couldn't tell them all, of course, because there are too many of them, but at least to give
00:50:49
Speaker
to to to flesh out 31 of those stories. and And hopefully by telling you, then pass it those words on to someone else and they'll do something with that. So, yeah.
00:51:09
Speaker
That was my conversation with Reverend Barbara Allen. Thank you for listening and thanks to Barbara for sharing her work. Plant Kingdom is hosted and produced by me, Katherine Pultz, and our music is by Carl Deiter.
00:51:23
Speaker
Listen to us wherever you get your podcasts and check out our website at plantkingdom.earth.
00:51:51
Speaker
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