Disappearing Arctic "penguins"

Author: Chen Linbo (Lecturer, School of History and Culture, Minzu University of China)

When we think of penguins, the first thing that comes to mind may be the group of white-backed, cute and cute elves in Antarctica. As everyone knows, there is also a kind of "penguin" in the Arctic. They have been with humans for a long time, but then they have been extinct. Looking back on this thought-provoking history is of great relevance at a time when the biodiversity crisis is overcast.

In the historical documents of various places along the ancient North Atlantic coast, a bird with a snow-white abdomen and a dark back resembled a cormorant. The Welsh people called it "Welsh Pengwyn", meaning "whitehead", as it was first found on The Island of Baldur. The term was later transliterated and simplified to "Penguin" and was widely used in Places such as Britain, Brittany and Newfoundland. Because it is the largest of the puffins, it has acquired the nickname "Great Auk" after modern times. After the 15th century, explorers from Portugal, Denmark and britain have found several times birds in the southern hemisphere that are very similar to the arctic "penguins", believing that they are the same species, and also named "penguins". After the 18th century, ornithologists and seafaring explorers in Britain, the United States and other countries gradually discovered huge differences in the physiological structure of "penguins" in the northern and southern hemispheres, and gradually used the term "great auk" to refer to arctic "penguins" and "penguins" to refer to penguins in the southern hemisphere. In the mid-19th century, with the extinction of the great auk, this Arctic "penguin" gradually became forgotten by mankind.

In prehistoric and antiquity, the great auk was an extremely common bird in the North Atlantic. They have been found in almost the entire North Atlantic region from the Arctic Circle to the north, to southern Italy and Florida in the south, to Scandinavia and the Mediterranean coast in the east, and to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador in the west. But by the end of the 18th century, only the scattered islands of the North Atlantic still had their footprints.

Scholars once believed that climate upheaval was the main reason why the great auk was forced to shrink a corner. Cold winters were frequent around the world in the 1st-4th centuries, and in the early Xiaoice period of 1300-1600, the North Atlantic sea ice was extremely common, and the sea ice spread to the hatchery of the southern Icelandic great auk and its nearby waters, making the journey of the great auk swimming and spawning on the island extremely difficult. The colder climate has also caused a sharp decline in oil herring and Atlantic herring populations, making it worse for the great auk foraging. If long-term climate anomalies are inevitable natural disasters, then short-term environmental changes can expose the auk's own incompatibility with the environment.

First, the great auk is the only bird in the puffin family that does not fly, and its hatching grounds, foraging range and range of activities are greatly limited. Second, the great auk has low reproductive capacity, with each female auk laying up to one egg per year. Third, the great auk is very demanding on the incubation site environment, and needs to be selected on the slopes of the rocky coast of the isolated island. Finally, for millions of years, the great auk has been at the top of the food chain for many years, and has not acquired the ability to avoid predators. Because of their proficiency in swimming, killer whales and white-tailed sea eagles do not pose a serious threat to them. However, the great auk travels slowly on land, and it is difficult to escape the hunting of humans.

In fact, humans have encountered the great auk as early as prehistoric times. In the ruins of a Neanderthal camp 100,000 years ago, archaeologists have found the bones of the great auk that had been eaten clean. Archaeologists have also found murals of the great auk in the 35,000-year-old Ebondo Cave in Spain and the 20,000-year-old Lascaux Cave in France. However, the prehistoric range of human activities is relatively narrow, and there are not many encounters with great auks; Accidental hunting does not pose an effective threat to the survival of the great auk.

The changes in the natural environment make the living area of the great auk continue to push southward, and the living circle of man and bird gradually overlaps, resulting in the great auk becoming one of the prey of human beings. Take the South Youste region of the United Kingdom, for example, in the Bronze Age and black iron age, the area is still commonly inhabited by great auks; By the Viking Age, the great auks in the area had been nearly slaughtered. The existential threat to the great auk from human overhunting gradually deepened, and the tragedy of the great auk began.

In the early modern period, the prosperity of European social economy and the initial formation of European and American trade networks made consumerism such as luxury, waste, and wealth fighting prevail. For example, the public's demand for food taste is becoming more and more demanding, and the demand for cod products is becoming more and more vigorous. In order to accelerate the development of cod fisheries, fishermen began to use large amounts of puffin meat as bait, creating an absurd spectacle of "fish eating birds". The disorderly expansion of the cod fishery and the indiscriminate demand for nature not only put the great auk on the altar of industrial fisheries, but also caused a large-scale fault of the trophic level of the marine ecosystem, resulting in the Indefinite Closure of newfoundland cod fisheries.

In the late modern period, the commercial use of down, scientific research and private collections drove a new round of hunting of the great auk. In the colorful advertising campaign of down merchants, the ownership of a puffin down bed is given the social attribute of "raising personal value" and "inheriting family culture". Ordinary people do not hesitate to empty their wallets and indulge in false "symbol consumption", only to realize the illusion of "squeezing into high society". At the same time, the mainstream biological community is not concerned about the extinction danger of the great auk, Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin and other scholars do not think that "species extinction" is urgent, F. Aldridge and other scholars even once believed that "the unwell are eliminated" is reasonable. Stimulated by both consumerism and Darwinism, naturalists offered high rewards for capturing the great auk in the name of scientific research. The scientific research needs of scholars have stimulated the "collecting mania" of the leisure class for the great auk. Some collectors even hope that the great auk will become extinct as soon as possible to increase the scarcity of the collection, and the price of the great auk and related products has soared. If the specimens of the great auk still have research value for scholars, then the specimen collection of the wealthy class has been completely brainwashed by the consumerism of "rare things are precious" and has become a false symbol of the "rare treasures" of the family collection.

Although anti-consumerist calls have always existed, they have not been able to resist the rise of consumerism; Despite policy norms in place in countries such as the United Kingdom, Iceland and Canada to protect the great auk, it has been difficult to stop the frenzied killing of the great auk. Compared with the wanton actions of human beings, the influence of the forces of nature on the great auk has long been minimal. In modern times, capitalist consumption patterns, represented by over-hunting, high levels of waste, demand creation, and ostentation of wealth, have dealt a devastating blow to the shrinking great auk, eventually making it extinct in 1852.

When it became clear that the great auk might disappear forever, the atlantic coastal countries began to legislate to protect all types of seabirds. In 1869, 1882 and 1911, the United Kingdom, Iceland and the United States enacted the Seabird Protection Act, the Bird Protection Act, and the Birds, Nests and Eggs Protection Act, respectively. In 1918, more than 60 years after the extinction of the great auk, the internationally binding "Migratory Bird Treaty" was late, and the protection of rare birds began to become the world consensus. Since the 1920s, countries such as Finland, Ireland and Sweden have also enacted legislation to protect wild birds. And these are in exchange for the successive extinction of birds such as dodo birds, labrador ducks, great auks, passenger pigeons, etc., and the price is not to be tragic.

Species extinction is an ecological change in line with the laws of nature, but the rapid extinction of species caused by excessive human intervention is enough to warn the world. Before the large-scale intensive hunting of humans, under the combination of factors such as cold climate, food shortages and the stagnation of their own evolutionary functions, the great auk showed obvious signs of functional decline, and human overconsumption prematurely deprived nature of the opportunity to test whether the great auk adapted to the environment and survive.

In today's world, there are breakthroughs in the field of international molecular biology. Scientists have used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology to achieve good results in gene editing in passenger pigeons and mammoths, and passenger pigeons are even expected to be successfully "revived" in the next few years. The "resurrection" of the great auk is also expected in the future. The "resurrection" of extinct species opens up new avenues of ecological restoration, but it also has the potential to create new forms of "species invasion" that pose new threats to existing ecosystems. To save endangered species, the protection of biodiversity is the core point.

Those who go are not to be advised, but those who come can be traced. Ecological civilization is the development trend of human civilization, and the protection of biodiversity is particularly important. In October 2021, the Kunming Declaration adopted by the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity held in Kunming, China, once again emphasized the need for humanity to take a combination of measures to curb and reverse biodiversity loss, including measures such as "strengthening the protection and restoration of ecosystems" and "sustainable production and consumption, and reducing waste", which are highly consistent with the historical experience of the extinction of great auks. The second phase of the Conference will take place in December 2022. We look forward to the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which will bring new light to biodiversity conservation. Human beings must act together to reduce interference in wild beings, unswervingly take the road of ecological civilization, jointly seek the construction of global ecological civilization, and promote the harmonious coexistence of man and nature.

Guangming Daily ( 2022-08-08 14 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily