I preface the procession with a disclaimer\/ celebration:<\/p>\n
This is an experiment, there are no rules, we are inventing it all together because we need to \u2013\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Then we press pieces of paper with the names of lost species into their hands and pockets, and off we\u00a0all go, carrying an effigy of Benjamin, the last thylacine. We only made a head and a tail, and they are connected by a great length of white sheet that many people hold and drape over their shoulders. We’re a motley crew: Ellie at the front in her thylacine mask made from an old teddy bear, tolling the Bell for Lost Species as she goes; Gary with his dark glasses and his tambourine like a Krishna devotee; Alex the bewhiskered numb-fingered ukulele player; people with masks with lanterns; my son Felix running around like a paparazzo with a borrowed GoPro. People smile as we pass by, or shake their heads and mutter “bloody humans” when they hear that it’s Remembrance Day for Lost Species.<\/p>\n Wake up<\/em>, shouts Andreas as the bell tolls. It’s time to wake up!<\/em><\/p>\n Is this alright, <\/em>I am thinking. Is this enough? I want this to be enough. I need it to be enough for the people who have come. Yet what could ever be enough?<\/em><\/p>\n Through the Pavilion Gardens – for a moment we nearly end up on\u00a0the temporary ice rink – then down onto the ink dark beach, crunching over pebbles all the way to the foreshore with this strange snaking hodgepodge creation. It stinks of fish down here but instinctively I want that – to perceive, viscerally, the processes of life and death.<\/p>\n The thylacine-snake is laid out in a circle with head and tail meeting in the middle – a great wonky ouroboros – and we gather shufflingly around it. Matt steps into the centre and tells the story of the thylacine – its uniqueness, its niche, its scapegoating, persecution and extermination.<\/p>\n Then, people speak from the edges of the circle of the things they wish to remember tonight:<\/p>\n I want to remember the\u00a0wolves and bears of this land shot to extinction<\/p>\n I want to remember the boreal forests of Canada given way to tar sands<\/p>\n I want to remember the great forests of Germany now all but gone<\/p>\n I want to remember the red gazelle, though I never knew of its existence till now<\/p>\n I want to remember Toughie and the lost amphibians<\/p>\n Down, I am sinking down, dropping so far, held by the voice of the sea and this fragile circle of vulnerability<\/em><\/p>\n I want to remember the lost forest people of Brazil and Panama<\/p>\n I want to remember Berta Caceres the murdered Honduran indigenous environmental activist<\/p>\n I want to remember the unborn Native American children poisoned by the persistent organic pollutants in the Great Lakes<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Screen-Shot-2016-12-01-at-12.13.21.png?resize=620%2C401&ssl=1\")
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