I have been watching David Attenborough’s ‘A Perfect Planet’ in which he expresses grave concern about the next mass extinction of global species – make no mistake this process has already started and will only escalate!
Like so many people the Covid lockdown has meant that I have had a lot of extra time on my hands, much of which I have spent re-cataloguing my extensive photographic archive of endangered species. This has engendered many amazing memories but also a deal of
sadness.
My all-time favourite location is Madagascar, where we visited in 2009. For me it even outshines the Galapagos Islands, Central and South America and India, all great wildlife places. Here you can find unique lemurs, chameleons, birds and flora found nowhere else in the world, but they are all 
under intense threat from a burgeoning human population which is having a devastating adverse impact on the land. After just a few years ‘slash and burn’ farming leaves a desert in its wake forcing many species into actual extinction. Unfortunately, advances in healthcare have not led to a corresponding decline in human birth rates there.
My all-time greatest memory is photographing the ‘dancing sifacas of Berenty’. Verreaux’s Sifaca is a beautiful, captivating primate which demonstrates such grace and beauty as it dances and pirouettes across open spaces between the trees in the forest.
Back then there was a stable, well-established colony and so it has come as a huge shock to
learn that they are already critically endangered and facing extinction. It is not inconceivable that soon all that will be left are photos to remind us of a time when the world was younger and beautiful.
Meanwhile back in Devon I am reminded how good our own birds are. An old pal of mine who now lives on the Oare Marshes in Kent was bemoaning how long it is since he saw any Greenfinches, a species now in national decline and yet we have four visiting us every day during the cold weather accompanied by a group of Siskins and all the other locals, all busy feeding on the sunflower hearts. Brian Hill in Colestocks has also reported Marsh Tits on his feeders, a species seldom seen these days.
Paul Lister 841696
