In our own lifetimes a mass extinction event is taking place across the globe. This event touches all our lives and should give us real cause for concern about our possible future. A glance at the recent past gives a disturbing indication of what may be in store.

Forty years before I was born, and not too far from where the august event took place, something far more important happened, the last Paradise Parrot, Psephotus pulcherrimus, was seen in the wild.

This was quite possibly the most beautiful Parrot ever seen by man, or so it was described by the scientist who first observed it. I will never know.

As a keen young bird watcher I spent many days searching for what had already been lost. I thought that if I could somehow find it I could bring it back, a childish and obviously futile effort at overcoming extinction.

Thirty years before my birth another tragedy took place, the last known Tasmanian tiger, Thylacinus cynocephalus, died.

Although separated from this event by time and space I am nonetheless, like so many others, deeply affected by it. I shared a common and long held dream of being the first to prove its continued existence, alas that will never be.

My late maternal Grandfather, a Taswegian, had one as a pet when he was a child. Apparently it was not a very good pet, being worth a quid per skin and not prone to affection. He showed me the scars as proof. He told me, presumably in the unlikely event that I should ever encounter a Tasmanian tiger, how to kill one without damaging the skin.

You gotta grab ‘em by the tail and they can’t turn round to bite you, keep their back feet off the ground”, fascinating I thought. “Then, you slide a knife up under the belly till you get to where the head meets the neck, drive the knife upwards straight and hard, and there you have the perfect skin. And don’t let it bite you cause it will break your bones, it will never let go until it takes the limb, even when dead it will not let go”.

Unfortunately there is no use for this ancestral advice nor will there ever be. My forbears have denied me this unique treasure. Inevitably it leads me to ask “How will my descendants judge me for my actions during the current mass extinction?”

We have lost so much and we are losing more by the minute. Climate change will almost certainly bring an even mightier wave of extinction. The choices we make now will determine the future we share.

We can help by reducing our use of limited resources or, perhaps as a Christmas gift, make a donation to an organisation dedicated to protecting our biodiversity e.g. http://www.wwf.org.au/about/ or http://www.adoptanaussie.com.au/charity.

However, I believe that the most effective thing we can do is remind our political masters that climate change and its impacts will influence our voting decisions.

Most political and media based climate change deniers are dedicated servants of vested interests and they pose a real threat of preventing much needed change. We must prove to these opportunists that more votes and a larger media profile lie in the pursuance of effective and immediate action on climate change.

We are all responsible and each of us has a role to play. What will your choices be and what will you tell your grandchildren?

Written by Joe Purcell