Lathan explores extinction in his latest book, following ten species that have disappeared from the planet in the 21st century
By Stephen McGrath
It may not be as sudden as a cataclysmic asteroid slamming into the Earth, but many scientists argue that a sixth mass extinction event is already underway, driven largely by human activity.
It’s a disconcerting reality that author Tom Lathan explores in his book Lost Wonders, where he tells the stories of ten species – from minuscule snails to the Galápagos’s Pinta Island tortoise, made famous by Lonesome George – that have all gone extinct within the 21st century.
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‘The species featured in this book have lived and died within the lifetimes of most of the people who will read it,’ he writes. ‘I wanted to know what was being lost, and what the sudden absence of a species meant for the ecosystem it had vanished from.’
Among Lathan’s doomed species is a snail the size of a sesame seed endemic to Malaysia’s now-razed limestone hills in Bukit Panching, ‘with a perfect, helter-skelter- shaped shell coloured in the shades of a sunset’. It was the first recorded extinction this century. Gone, too, is the po’ouli, an ancient type of Hawaiian honeycreeper declared extinct in 2019.
In a period of heightened climate anxiety and general planetary demise, Lost Wonders is timely and engaging. Around a million species today are at risk of extinction within the next few decades, according to the United Nations. ‘It’s an unavoidable fact that our species is, seemingly by its very nature, one of the most potent agents of ecological destruction, regardless of time, place or culture,’ Latham writes.
While it can make for bleak reading, since the author soundly brings the species to life through anecdotal histories and expert interviews, he also highlights the extraordinary efforts scientists and researchers make in trying to save our planet’s species. It’s a book that can induce despair and hope.
Amid last-ditch efforts to save a small bat named the Christmas Island pipistrelle, hopes quickly faded when researchers realised that they were only ever hearing one bat call at a time on their equipment, never two, three or four together. ‘That’s when we came to the devastating realisation,’ one of Australia’s top bat researchers told the author, ‘that there was probably only one pipistrelle left.’
