Here’s a hot tip. The leading candidate for the first recorded bird extinction on the African continent is the Liben lark. It’s down to its last 100 or so. It is officially categorised as critically endangered, the highest level of vulnerability.
It lives on a tiny patch of grassland in Ethiopia — and I mean small; it’s about 30sq km. This meagre chunk of land is being degraded at the most terrific rate. There is evidence that, under the stresses of a dwindling population, the ratio of the sexes has gone wrong, making it harder for the species to put together a good proportion of breeding pairs. It’s not looking good.
The conservation organisation BirdLife, a serious scientific organisation not given to alarmism, gives the bird two to three years. Not much of a prospect. If I were a bookie, I’d have stopped taking bets a while back.
The Liben lark is not much of a bird, either, not as human beings rate such things. I’d have a problem telling it from all the other larks, and I fancy myself as a bit of a birder. It’s a small brown bird, a bit like our skylark, but without the glorious song.
African larks can be difficult birds to tell apart at the best of times. Song is the best way to do it, of course. The Liben lark is not one of the great singers either: its voice is described as “three to five melodious clipped whistles, given in high display-flight”. So it’s a bit like a skylark, insofar as it is, basically, a small brown ground bird that takes to the sky when it wants to show off and set about the process of making more larks.
Advertisement
The main problem is overgrazing.
Too many cows, trashing the landscape in a manner that is not to the long-term good of larks or cows or pastoralists. This is a looming crisis, and the Liben lark is on its leading edge.
I accept that the Liben lark is a hard bird to sell. If we were standing on the grass plains around Negele, on the east of Africa, with a Liben lark slap bang in the middle of a telescope’s field of view, I don’t suppose the sight would mean all that much to you. To be frank, it wouldn’t mean all that much more to me.
But it’s not about you and it’s not about me. It’s about a bird that — like the great sexy eagles and the pretty flamingos and the glittering kingfishers that you see when you visit Africa and which give you (and me) a great deal more pleasure — has taken a few million years to evolve and it should not be disposed of casually.
If a species, however drab, however unexciting, takes the trouble to evolve, then giving it the chance to survive seems to me the very least we can do. It’s nothing more than basic courtesy.
Advertisement
Conserving nature isn’t about human gratification. This is an old argument for committed birders; and committed birders have raised £242,000 for the Liben lark’s conservation. Go to Birdfair, the British Birdwatching Fair, held annually in August at Rutland Water. It was founded by my old friend Martin Davies, in partnership with his old friend Tim Appleton. Like all the best ideas, it came up over a pint.
Last year’s fair raised this money for BirdLife’s partner, the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society. It will benefit Liben larks, Ethiopian bush crows, white-tailed swallows and pastoralists, in a programme of work in partnership with local people.
There used to be a car sticker: “Birdwatchers do it for a lark.”