{"id":483,"date":"2016-11-19T22:16:58","date_gmt":"2016-11-19T22:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/?p=483"},"modified":"2019-10-21T21:12:34","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T21:12:34","slug":"why-dont-we-grieve-for-extinct-species-by-jeremy-hance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/?p=483","title":{"rendered":"Why don\u2019t we grieve for extinct species? – by Jeremy Hance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo of \u00a0the Brighton funeral for the Great Auk\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This article on Remembrance Day for Lost Species is reproduced from the Guardian<\/a>\u00a0with the permission of the author Jeremy Hance<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In early 2010, artist, activist and mother, Persephone Pearl, headed to the Bristol Museum. Like many concerned about the fate of the planet, she was in despair over the failed climate talks in Copenhagen that winter. She sat on a bench and looked at a stuffed animal behind glass: a thylacine. Before then, she\u2019d never heard of the marsupial carnivore that went extinct in 1936.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere was this beautiful mysterious lost creature locked in a glass case,\u201d she said. \u201cIt struck me suddenly as unbearably undignified. And I had this sudden vision of smashing the glass, lifting the body out, carrying the thylacine out into the fields, stroking its body, speaking to it, washing it with my tears, and burying it by a river so that it could return to the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pearl felt grief, deep grief, over the loss of a creature she\u2019d never once seen in life, a species that had been shot to extinction because European settlers had deemed it vermin. Yet, how do we grieve for extinct species when there are no set rituals, no extinction funerals, no catharsis for the pain caused by a loss that in many ways is simply beyond human comprehension? We have been obliterating species for over ten thousand years \u2013 beginning with the megafauna of the Pleistocene like woolly rhinos, short-faced bears and giant sloths \u2013 yet we have no way of mourning them.<\/p>\n

Still, Pearl didn\u2019t push the grief under or ignore it. Instead, she sought to share it. In 2011 Pearl, who is the co-director of the arts group, ONCA<\/a>, and the theatre group Feral<\/a> in Brighton, helped organise the first ever Remembrance Day for Lost Species<\/a>. Held every November 30th, it\u2019s since become a day for activists, artists and mourners to find creative ways to share their grief for extinct species \u2013 and reinvigorate their love for the natural world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope the Remembrance events will function as funerals for humans do,\u201d Rachel Porter, a co-founder of Remembrance Day for Lost Species and a movement therapist, said. \u201cSuch rituals are ancient, embedded within us. We are just placing this common ritual into an unfamiliar context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of these events are not large \u2013 they are not thousands of people marching on government buildings \u2013 but more like the number of people who would attend a funeral for a loved one. They are communal and largely intimate events, full of things you might expect and others you might not: such as burning pyres, chanting, poetry reading, bell tolling and processionals.<\/p>\n

But there are no rules to the Remembrance Day for Lost Species and anyone can start a public event or hold a private ceremony. This year, they are going on all over the world<\/a>, including a dinner for the dodo in London, a poetry reading in Berlin, and a remembrance ritual for the thylacine outside of Brisbane, Australia.<\/p>\n

Graphic designer and art therapist Julia Peddie, who is hosting the thylacine ritual in Australia this year, said she remembers as a child first learning about how humans wiped out the dodo \u2013 and how the knowledge crushed her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can only imagine how children feel now, witnessing such enormous losses, and wonder if they are desensitising in order to cope,\u201d she said. \u201cRemembrance Day for Lost Species provides an opportunity for children and adults to connect with their grief, and in doing so, reclaim a part of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

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War memorial to the passenger pigeon by Camilla Schofield<\/em><\/p>\n

The vitality of grief<\/h2>\n

But let\u2019s be honest, many of us probably find the idea of attending a funeral or walking in a processional for a vanished species a little foolish. It may even make us feel something more profound: vulnerable. But Pearl said this is only to be expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf grieving for a lost person is difficult, grieving for ecosystems and species is entirely novel and challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that as a global society we have lost the knowledge of how to grieve even for our closest loved ones, quoting teacher and author Stephen Jenkinson who writes that our society is \u201cdeath phobic and grief illiterate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe struggle to talk about death and dying,\u201d Pearl said. \u201cIt is seen as a terrible thing, to be avoided at all costs. We are afraid of upsetting people, and of awkward conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

But at what cost? According to Porter, our inability to show grief \u2013 or even allow ourselves to feel it \u2013 may lead to mental illness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe grief might become misplaced if it\u2019s not recognised and misguided grief could be destructive, it could manifest as depression or anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n

In contrast, displaying grief can result in catharsis. In an emotional process first described by Aristotle over 2,000 years ago, pent up, intense feelings are allowed safe release through ritual. Afterwards, mourners are able to move forward, maybe even with more wisdom than before.<\/p>\n

\u201cActual grief is hardly practiced today,\u201d Megan Hollingsworth, a poet and founder of the collaborative art project ex\u00b7tinc\u00b7tion wit\u00b7ness<\/a>, said. \u201cIf it were, children would neither be murdered in war nor would they go hungry and homeless in the streets of the world\u2019s \u2018wealthiest\u2019 nations. Water would be protected. The desires of \u2018grown\u2019 men and women would not ever trump the needs of any single child, let alone whole communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollingsworth, also one of the founders of the Remembrance Day for Lost Species, will be holding a bell tolling ceremony in Montana on the 30th.<\/p>\n

Tear your hair for the extinct<\/h2>\n

But grief doesn\u2019t occur only when we lose loved ones. Ask anyone who has seen a local forest they once played in as a child demolished for another cookie-cutter development or has watched as fewer bees and butterflies show up in their garden each summer. Or ask any conservationist who has to witness year-after-year as the species they work with slowly vanish, ask any marine biologist about coral reefs or any Arctic biologist about sea ice. Grief can extend far beyond our human parochialism.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realised that there was a hunger for a way of grieving ecological loss through ritual,\u201d said Porter who in 2011 directed a Funeral for Lost Species<\/a> through her group, Feral Theatre. This was an outdoor theatrical performance in a churchyard that included various traditional forms of mourning and tilted between somber and whimsical.<\/p>\n

Porter believes many people are simply \u201cstuck in a kind of denial\u201d when it comes to extinction, biodiversity loss and environmental crises.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we face it honestly and fully we have to face our own collective shadow, our out-of-control destructive urges and acts. These are terrible, terrifying things to face alone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Part of this denial is also due to our growing disconnect from nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany humans now solely interact with domesticated animals and plants. Some have no experience whatsoever of intact forest, field, and aquatic community. The total loss of other community members, their families, and life affirming ways then is an utterly distant abstraction,\u201d Hollingsworth said. \u201cYet in grief, as in love, humans are wired for intimacy. \u201c<\/p>\n

According to the founders of the Remembrance Day for Lost Species, grieving in a ritualised ceremony removes our isolation from other mourners \u2013 we are after all grieving communally \u2013 and cuts through the denial.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor those in denial bearing witness to acts of remembrance and honouring reminds them non-aggressively of something that they are pushing away. That is why making these rituals public is so very important,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n

In the end such rituals may help people transform their perfectly understandable anger \u2013 which is \u201cconnected to the disregard and destruction of the natural world,\u201d according to Porter \u2013 into something ultimately productive.<\/p>\n

Providing a real outlet for grief could help people finally take action and change the world for the better.<\/p>\n

\u201cPotentially, in our sadness, we can vow not to continue to let it happen, and acknowledge the role we humans are playing in causing the extinctions,\u201d Peddie said. \u201cGrief can provide a pathway for taking responsibility, and making a commitment to take action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such rituals also allow us to view extinction in a novel way. So much of the information we receive about extinctions and biodiversity decline today comes from science, not from personal experience in the wild. And while science is necessary, it is often represented in wonky papers or press release that are bloodless, cold, even inhuman \u2013 a recitation of facts rather than a proper elegy for the lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cTelling the stories of recently extinct species is a way of capturing people\u2019s imaginations to this end,\u201d said Pearl. \u201cIt\u2019s not science or statistics, it\u2019s history, it\u2019s real life \u2013 and in an age of cultural amnesia, storytelling inspired by historical events is a way to learn lessons from the past.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But many probably fear that allowing themselves to feel the grief \u2013 really feel it \u2013 will result in a personal collapse. Hollingsworth said that an environmental studies professor once told her: \u201c\u2018I can\u2019t think of this as grief. That would be endless.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But this is \u201cwhere the misconception lies,\u201d according to Hollingsworth. Grieving doesn\u2019t bring endless suffering, but healing and health.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens when I don\u2019t grieve someone\u2019s death? What does it mean not to feel or express sorrow when someone passes unnecessarily due to my negligence? Just the thought of this is chilling to me as the sociopath is brought to mind,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Grief can be funny too<\/h2>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean such events have to be sombre and drowned in tears. No emotion is wrong, according to the founders of the Remembrance Day for Lost Species. They are not afraid to throw humour and whimsy into their rituals.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften at human funerals people share funny stories about the dead person and it gives a relief, a release from weight of loss, and it can bring a celebratory feel,\u201d said Porter.<\/p>\n

Laughter can be incredibly powerful, even during a ritual mourning.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumour allows us to softly break through denial and isolation, to damp down the tempers fire, to create space in between the agony, the fear, the chaos,\u201d said Porter.<\/p>\n

Recently, Pearl attended the Stories of the Anthropocene<\/a> Festival in Stockholm where she held a remembrance ceremony for the thylacine. Attendees were asked to share their stories about extinction \u2013 but first they had to step through a glitter curtain.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can make people laugh, you are halfway to love. You can take people to deep places. You can encourage them to take risks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But sombreness is okay, too, the founders insist. It all depends on what you are hoping to create within the context of the ritual.<\/p>\n

Grieving in the Anthropocene<\/h2>\n

Legend says the world\u2019s last thylacine died cold and alone. The story is that it was mistakenly locked out of its nighttime quarters at the zoo in Hobart, Tasmania during an unusually cold night in 1936. The animal, which was never even identified as a male or female, perished from exposure. That was 80 years ago this year.<\/p>\n

While the last thylacine may not have actually died from the cold, it certainly died in a kind of loneliness that is almost impossible for humans \u2013 seven billion and rising \u2013 to comprehend. It was, after all, an endling. The last of its kind.<\/p>\n

And yet do we barely remember it, let alone weep for it.<\/p>\n

Julia Peddie said the 80th Anniversary of the extinction of the thylacine \u201cwent fairly unnoticed in the mainstream media\u201d even in its native Australia.<\/p>\n

Despite little media around the anniversary, Australia still has a lot of \u201cnostalgia\u201d for the thylacine, said Peddie, to the extent that some people believe it still inhabits the wild lands of Tasmania.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, this is a kind of denial in action, an inability to accept the extinction of what once was; a denial that may continue to allow Australians \u2013 and people around the world \u2013 to ignore the losses going on right in front of them.<\/p>\n

Australia is an epicentre of extinction. It has the highest mammal loss of any country on Earth. Since European arrival, the country has lost at least 30 species of mammal. And another was lost just this year: the Bramble Cay melomys<\/a>, the world\u2019s first mammal known to have gone extinct due to climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stories of lost species remind us that things do end, they do die, that we are causing irrevocable and deeply distressing changes \u2013 but that the ending\u2019s not yet written for the stories of rhinoceros, of hedgehogs, of phytoplankton,\u201d said Pearl.<\/p>\n

So, really, why don\u2019t we grieve for the passenger pigeon, the golden toad, or the Yangtze River dolphin? Or how about Rabbs\u2019 fringe-limbed tree frog<\/a> which just vanished from the Earth in September? Why don\u2019t we rend our garments for the woolly mammoth, or tear our hair for the dodo or smear our windows with ash for the great moas that once roamed New Zealand? It can\u2019t hurt. It could only heal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to imagine and invent new rituals for the Anthropocene,\u201d said Pearl. \u201cWhat would a memorial for the Caspian tiger or the elephant bird look like? A memorial for the Great Barrier Reef? For 350 parts per million of atmospheric CO2?\u201d<\/p>\n

The age of the Anthropocene is an age of grief, put simply. Not showing, sharing or indeed feeling that grief will make it all the more unbearable. But a collective keening may be key to moving forward and creating a new society that fully respects and cherishes the millions of life forms that call this planet home.<\/p>\n

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