Get Ready Mofo to Start Crying All Over Again Like 2016
Swift Parrot x Dark Mofo - by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
ISLAND | ISSUE 158 On the eve of the winter solstice, Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn explores a tale of sex and death
I gulp equally the ogoh-ogoh looms over me, gear up to prey on my fears. The usually diminutive swift parrot (or Lathamus discolor) is rendered in behemoth glory as a papier-mâché Balinese sculpture. Beneath the parrot'south clawed pes is a small parcel made of palm leaf: a canang sari. This offering contains a sprig of lavender, a rose, and a small money folded inside. At that place is no white flower – in a traditional Balinese canang sari, white petals are laid toward the east for Iswara, the god of nature.
Standing before the ogoh-ogoh with paper in hand, I offer my hastily written fears. I feel like I once felt in front end of a statue in a church: confessional and prepared to pour out misgivings earlier a glazed centre. Only the swift parrot in demon form looks ferociously angry – its pupils resemble the throbbing centre of a flame. In Indonesia, the ogoh-ogoh is usually burnt on Nyepi the Day of Silence preceding Balinese New year's day. In lutruwita/Tasmania, the called-for ceremony takes place on the eve of the wintertime solstice, at Hobart's waterfront. You lot tin hear it from the suburbs; the roaring, booming and crackling is otherworldly for a structure made of newspaper.
The swift parrot is forepart and eye at this year'south Dark Mofo. Festivalgoers eolith their fears in the newspaper sculpture to be burnt at the Ngrupuk procession, in a ritual of purification and sacrifice. The purpose of the ogoh-ogoh is to rid the natural environment of any spiritual pollutants emitted from the activities of living beings – especially humans. Fittingly, the sculpture takes the form of a critically endangered bird. Swifties are the fastest parrots in the world. Amazingly, they are idea to cross the split between the Apple Isle and the mainland in equally little as half-dozen hours.
As atmospheric carbon dioxide reaches the highest levels since humans evolved, the Australian Conservation Foundation recently establish that Australia has the worst charge per unit of mammalian extinction. More than than 29 native mammal species have been declared extinct since colonisation, and countless more amphibia, crustacea and other beast have now been embalmed in historical memory; those, that is, that we recorded before killing them off. The first bird lost to extinction in mainland Commonwealth of australia later on 1788 was a parrot – the paradise parrot. Information technology seems that the swift and orange-bellied parrots volition before long follow. With fewer than 50 OBP breeding pairs left, some of the birds at present drift across Bass Strait in a plane: they are besides rare to risk flying through storms. Swift parrot numbers are also plummeting, threatened by logging, invasive species and involuntary polyandry on the frontlines of the world'southward sixth mass extinction crisis.
It troubles me that in our culture, climate and animals are framed by environmental algebra, where human stories are separated in brackets from their ecological syntax. The challenge of addressing extinction often removes the bailiwick from its surroundings. Just at the crux of the environmental crisis are people – or more particularly, the way we care for things and places which are non people.
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New Zealand'southward longest-running court boxing concerns a person who was once a river. For 170 years, leaders from the Maori Iwi showtime nation have fought to grant the Whanganui River legal personhood. After winning their case in 2016, a group of Ethnic representatives will now act as advocates for New Zealand'south 3rd-largest river and the legal system will recognise the waterbody equally a being with the same rights as a citizen.
Jacinta Ruru, a Professor from the University of Otago, says the laws completely flip the presumption of human sovereignty over the environs; the legal instruments carve out a niche in the stratified common law, creating an culling infinite that recognises the Maori group's longstanding relationship with the river, a legal personhood anchored to a human relationship with humans.
Over the past 200 years, the colonial pastoral projection has carved deep scars on the country, both in New Zealand and Australia. Historian James Boyce writes on the squatter expansion from Van Diemen'southward Land to Port Phillip in birrarunga/ Melbourne: 'Perhaps the almost pressing issue of our time [the 21st century] is the necessity to rein in the continent-wide resource rush that began with the seizure of the grasslands in 1835.' Riding on the fantasy of countless expansion, the aftermath of colonialism involves the ongoing damage to homelands where Indigenous peoples have taken intendance of the land for millennia. We tin't collectively process loss through purging or fantasy; descendants of white settlers need to acknowledge the cauterised history of genocide. The truth has to exist dwelt in.
"We tin't collectively process loss through purging or fantasy; descendants of white settlers need to acknowledge the cauterised history of genocide. The truth has to exist dwelt in."
The lack of connexion to the unknowable 'Other' – the distance that pares land and creatures away from their contexts, to exist bought and sold, cleared and tagged – is at the helm of settler-colonial philosophy. The Anthropocene is riddled past psychological detachment from ecological values where 'species' are separated from their habitats, externalising our ecological frames through rituals of purity and erasure as we collectively mourn the spectres of extinction. Timothy Morton writes in Queer Ecology, 'We are losing touch on with a fantasy Nature that never really existed.'
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By worshipping idealised versions of the 'exterior', nosotros risk losing connexion to the wildness inherent in life: relational, shifting, elusive.
"Past worshipping idealised versions of the 'outside', nosotros hazard losing connexion to the wildness inherent in life: relational, shifting, elusive."
We are ill-equipped for dialogues of extinction as language tends to neglect the remarkable diversity and resilience of ecology. The intricate literature of beings, encoded in spiralling threads of DNA, is securely interwoven; it cannot unspool into categories. The very meaning of the discussion species is relative – something which is like to something else. The other definition of a species – a creature that tin can breed productively with another creature – is also flawed and, these days, highly contested. With the appearance of cloning, unabridged jail cell nuclei can be swapped from one species to another to reproduce in hybrid forms. In a mod test of de-extinction, in 2003 2 bantengs (an endangered species of Southward-Eastward Asian wild cattle) were built-in at the San Diego 'Frozen Zoo' from the womb of a modern cow. One of the clones died. The other went on to live a short and lone life at San Diego Zoo. In 1849, banteng were brought to Australia's Northern Territory, where they tin can now be found grazing wild on the ranges and savannah, but the lack of genetic multifariousness from sparse breeding pairs has caused a bottleneck at the genetic pool. As it turns out, you lot can't remove animals from their environment without ultimately erasing who they are.
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During the winter I spend a few days in lunawanna-alonnah/ Bruny Island. In the national park, I think I meet a light-green flame spurt through the sky. I realise it's a swift parrot when information technology lands on a telegraph wire beside a cottage, quickly taking off again to alight upon a casuarina tree. It clambers onto the thin branches, bobbing similar a Christmas ornament. I fumble with my phone and try to capture the bird in a digital mesh, but it's too late. My camera blinks and the parrot disappears into the woods.
I imagine the flocks of parrots that would once arc in a higher place the island, setting dark-green fires like an aurora in the wintry sky. The sharp, fluid whistle of birdsong sounds in my ears like the crack of a feathery whip, or knives being sharpened. In the volume Where Song Began, biologist Tim Low writes on the early origins of music, saying that the songbirds of prehistoric Gondwana are among the oldest species known to brand melodies. I exhale securely, remembering how I once saw two whistling kites cling to each other's chests and spin similar figure skaters, locked in encompass.
"I imagine the flocks of parrots that would one time arc higher up the island, setting light-green fires like an aurora in the wintry sky. The sharp, fluid whistle of birdsong sounds in my ears like the crevice of a feathery whip, or knives being sharpened."
Sugar gliders were introduced to Tasmania from the mainland by colonial traders in the 1830s. Swifties take not adult whatever defences against the sugar gliders; they did not evolve together, but they both rely on the sweet nectar and hollowed trunks of blue gums as their main sources of nutrient and shelter. The cute-looking gliders eat the eggs from swift parrots' nests, invading their homes and sometimes killing the mother parrots. Widespread deforestation in Tasmania'south southern refuges means there are fewer niches available, and so gliders and parrots are pitted against each other for existent estate.
There are now three swift parrot males for every female person. The adult sex imbalance leads to a multitude of flow-on effects for the swifties, entwined in a love triangle of sex and death. Traditionally monogamous, the parrots have at present been forced into polygamy.
Outnumbered, the nesting mothers accept to put up with unwanted attending from male parrots in breeding periods. When at that place's more one father in the nest, the family dynamics go tricky: some mothers spend time fending off potential suitors, others might seek out more visitor in exchange for food or protection. Should a female swift parrot cull to take a lover, the father might devote his time – meliorate spent finding food for his babies – fighting off prospective partners from the nest. This level of distraction for both parents means they tin't nurture their young, leading to neglected fledglings with poor chances of survival. Populations are in freefall; some researchers predict no swift parrots will exist left in well-nigh 15 years.
Swifties aren't the just ones changing their behaviour to cope with human being pressure. Around the world, humans are driving the evolution of birds at loftier speed. Research suggests swallows have evolved shorter wings for faster have-offs around route hotspots to avoid traffic accidents. Songbirds in the UK have evolved longer beaks since the 19th century, perhaps to more hands excerpt seed from the bird feeders pop in English language gardens. Birds are a symbol of fragility, but besides of survival; they are considered by many to be living dinosaurs. They form a relic of the by from the famed extinction caused by the external force of a meteor. But in the 21st century we can't externalise disaster. We humans need to acknowledge our commonage agency in the ecology crisis.
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Information technology's the winter solstice. The burning of the ogoh-ogoh is almost to begin; the pocket-sized bird, nestled in a burning pyre of tree limbs, volition shortly be sacrificed. The fact that this parrot sculpture is likely built from the pulp of another bird's habitat is pertinent – Sustainable Timber Tasmania (the new face of Forestry Tasmania) recently tried to reach Forest Stewardship Council certification, only was knocked dorsum thank you to its penchant for destroying swift parrot habitat in areas such as the Wielangta reserve in Southward-East Tasmania. Thousands of hectares across the island are threatened by poor regulatory oversight and illegal logging operations. Caught betwixt fragmented ecosystems, there'south no safe identify for swifties to call dwelling.
In June 2019, 17 000 hectares of Tasmanian blackness gum forests (Eucalyptus ovata) were alleged critically endangered, reflecting the swift parrot's status under federal legislation. Because swift parrots are highly nomadic, roaming widely until they discover saccharide hotspots, they require a holistic approach to conservation. Currently, methods being rolled out include programs to kill sugar gliders, and installation of solar-powered nests which lock against predators.
Assuasive ecologies to regenerate to the point where biodiversity tin return and flourish is crucial non only for swift parrots, but for myriad organisms who rely on each other for survival. And it'south non going to be piece of cake. The challenge of reforestation is complicated by proliferating noisy miner birds (Manorina melanocephala), who operate in tough competition with parrots for nutrient. The famed biologist Edward O Wilson writes, '[t]he animal and flora of an ecosystem are far more than collections of species. They are a complex system of interactions, where the extinction of whatsoever species under certain conditions could have a profound impact on the whole.' It seems the fastest parrot in the world can run simply can't hibernate when there'southward nowhere to residual.
"Information technology seems the fastest parrot in the earth tin can run but can't hide when there'due south nowhere to rest."
In the nebulous mesh of interrelationship, in that location is so much that we don't know well-nigh the beings nosotros share the planet with. Every day, new species are discovered and added to the mosaic; meanwhile, others silently disappear. Captive convenance programs and reforestation are conservation efforts that remain constricted by our culture's divides between people and not-people. Every bit populations of non-people silently plummet, researchers are grappling with the puzzler of using genetic cloning to de-extinct species.
But the question is, even if nosotros do bring them dorsum, will they be the same creatures that nosotros tell children stories well-nigh? The homes that cradle us are then much a role of our identity, just as the ecosystems that let animals to thrive are inseparable from their inhabitants. The biological code is the foundational layer beneath ecosystems; DNA is not written like a guidebook. The same way you lot won't find a story if you open up a dictionary, 'a gene doesn't tell you lot how to read it and make it an organism. The genetic code is more like a database than an instruction manual,' says biologist David Ehrenfeld. De-extinction offers these problems: if nosotros become across the realm of species loss and return back again, where will the creature get? What kind of life will they have? Are they still doomed to hereafter extinction if we don't alter how we live as humans?
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'Commit your fears into the heart of a giant swift parrot, an endangered species that breeds in Tasmania and forms this twelvemonth's ogoh-ogoh,' reads the Night Mofo brochure. Okay, I think. What practise I fear most? Intimacy. I scribble information technology down. Losing my mind. A lack of possibility. Just my worst nightmares are of losing people. I woke upwardly crying the other week from a dream where my friend was swimming with me through a urban center knee-deep in h2o. He was a immature medical student and passionate climate activist, who took his ain life a year ago. In my dream I inquire him over and over: 'Why don't you come back?'
The swift parrot journeys to Tasmania from the mainland each year, crossing Bass Strait in the months before summer (unremarkably mid-Baronial) to brood. Swifties have refuge in trees that are very old or dead. This is where they raise their young: in dry sclerophyll forests, in the tree hollows of southern blueish gums (Eucalyptus globulus). Amid a diminishing habitat, especially in old-growth forests which provide foraging and nesting hollows, swifties are under threat of reduction to the point of non-existence – of extinction, of being lost. I think nearly the word extinction. 'Ex' brings something outside, or into the past. Information technology sounds like 'extinguish' – the snuffing of a flame.
Rise temperatures are taking their toll, every bit droughts have been driving swift parrots further in their migration patterns from Tasmania to New South Wales, sometimes all the way to Queensland. Climate change is bringing a whole host of threats to birdlife, including fatal diseases spread by mosquitoes whose range is extending to college altitudes.
A biologist bankrupt down and cried when he discussed the future of 'apapanes and 'i'iwis, species that closely resemble Australian honeyeaters only are endemic to Hawai'i and are susceptible to mosquito-borne diseases. 'The animals you study are similar your children,' he said. 'They are not supposed to die before you do.'
Emotions are not easily articulated within the boundaries of human and 'Other'. I think the neatness of the peppery dark-green birds in a glass-covered drawer at the museum. Their bodies were rolled similar cigars, with tiny clawed feet bound like hostages of the future, ropes knotted in the colonial pursuit of exotic lands. I think about the human being demand to collect and take stock. The impetus to keep empirical records could be fatigued from a fear of living in the unknown – but an inchoate fearfulness of loss makes information technology difficult to honey things that can ultimately disappear. Edward O Wilson writes that nosotros are inbound the Eremocene, or the era of loneliness. At that place are thought to be only 1000 breeding pairs of swift parrots left, outside captivity. I imagine a kind of ark crossing Bass Strait, birds straddling the deck in pairs with bright wings clipped.
"At that place are thought to exist just 1000 breeding pairs of swift parrots left, outside captivity. I imagine a kind of ark crossing Bass Strait, birds straddling the deck in pairs with bright wings clipped."
In modern Western culture, death often seems to stain chop-chop into taboo. It defines the by, non the hereafter. We sever death from the present by ritualising transcendence or burying. But some imprints tin't exist excised – the blur left by swallows winging across the sky. The shattered skeleton of an archaeopteryx. The mimicry of a lyrebird. The 'Other' shows us what nosotros are and are not. For many people, the fearfulness of losing other creatures is emotionally harrowing.
At the purging, I put my slice of paper in the ogoh-ogoh's breast like an intimate surreptitious. On the solstice, expressionless copse will burn underneath the swift parrot sculpture, lighting upwards the longest darkness of the year. It'south a beautiful sacrifice for the gods: a pre-emptive loss. ▼
You can help the swift parrot by donating to the Hard Birds Research Group Endowment
Opening prototype: photo past Nighttime Mofo/Rémi Chauvin, 2019;
swift parrots photograph past Henry Cook;
all other photos past Dark Mofo/Jesse Hunniford, 2019
Source: https://islandmag.com/read/swift-parrot-x-dark-mofo
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