Sir David Attenborough champions BirdLife International’s work to halt extinctions

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Sir David Attenborough, the greatest wildlife communicator of our age, has added his weight to the BirdLife Preventing Extinctions Programme by becoming a Species Champion.

“We have no right to exterminate the species that evolved without us”, Sir David said. “We have the responsibility to do everything we can to preserve their continued existence.”

Sir David chose the occasion of this year’s British Birdwatching Fair to announce that he would be backing work to prevent the extinction of the Critically Endangered Araripe Manakin Antilophia bokermanni.

Known to science for just ten years, the bird was first described in 1998, the Araripe Manakin is at risk of making an exit as sudden as its entrance into the annals of the world’s birds. A survey in 2006 led to an estimate of only 800 individuals, all confined to an area of moist forest less than 28 km² in extent on the north-eastern slope of the Chapada do Araripe, south Ceará, Brazil.

The Species Guardian for the Araripe Manakin is the Brazilian conservation organization, Aquasis. “The small patch of moist forest is surrounded by caatinga, dry shrubland and thorn forest”, explained Aquasis Director Alberto Campos. “Around one million people depend on the forest for their water supply. But the moist forest is shrinking every day because of fires, the spread of agriculture and the development of leisure homes for people who want to escape the hot, dry climate. People have not yet realised that their quality of life, and economic activities such as agriculture, depend on the preservation of the forest, they think water comes from the water company!”

“We have no right to exterminate the species that evolved without us. We have the responsibility to do everything we can to preserve their continued existence.” —Sir David Attenborough

Alberto Campos says a new threat may come from proposals to revive sugar cane cultivation, last practiced in the area a century ago, to meet the growing demand for ethanol for biofuel. Sugar is a thirsty crop, and cultivation would be likely to follow the river valleys up the slopes, threatening the riverside ‘gallery’ forest the Araripe Manakin depends on.

“We believe that the water issue will ultimately save the Araripe Manakin, if we can convince the one million city dwellers that their water supply will be guaranteed if they preserve the moist forest”, Alberto Campos explained.

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