Today marks the 6th annual Remembrance Day for Lost Species. Remembrance Day is an opportunity to set aside time to memorialize one of those lost species. To create a space that allows us to acknowledge and grieve for what we have lost. It is also a chance for us to tell their story and renew our commitments to ensuring the remaining are preserved and flourish.
This is the premise of my latest project, It Was Very Good, to catalog and remember the animal species lost due to human actions. The first post went live last week: The Atlas Bear. Next week’s will be the Auroch.
Today, though I’m going to set some time aside to mourn the loss of the Australian Thylacine. Eighty years ago the last known Thylacine, Benjamin, died in a zoo. No one living today knows what the Thylacine sounded like. No one is alive today knows how they moved or what their social interactions were. And no one will ever know these things. I think we are poorer for that loss and I think it is something worth mourning over.
There is nothing I, or you, can do for the Thylacine. But, there is also nothing any of us can do when a loved one dies. We acknowledge that loss though. We mourn and remember. As Abi Nielson so aptly put it, “Surely a failure to acknowledge, or to mark the passing of such losses is just one more disconnect between ourselves and the world we inhabit? We are humans, we are animals. We berate our rich politicians for being out of touch with the lives of the majority, while we ourselves remain out of touch with the lives of the majority of animals on this planet.” Remembrance Day is one small way we can help get ourselves back in touch.
