Chatterbox: Inkwell

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Adam Lone
and the Blue–Backed Yellow Gonick

  Adam Lone was 15 years old and one
of the most popular children in Glenley High School when he first heard of a
critically endangered bird called the Blue–Backed Yellow Gonick. It was a
beautiful and brightly coloured bird with a body that was mostly yellow in
colour, with blue wings and a blue back. Cartoonist Larry Gonick first sighted
the bird while he was on vacation with his family in southern Minnesota in the
United States of America. It was later discovered that the species was
critically endangered and that there were only two thousand or so living in the
wild.

As a part of his Environmental
Education class at school, Adam had been given an assignment, which was to do
something to save an endangered species. He did some research and discovered
that the Blue–Backed Yellow Gonick was endangered because of habitat
destruction, which came in the form of logging and mining in a large part of
the bird’s small range of habitation in southern Minnesota.

Adam Lone decided to go a step
further than his project’s guidelines required: instead of simply making
posters to promote the preservation of the Blue–Backed Yellow Gonick’s habitat,
he launched a letter writing campaign. He wrote to lawmakers, bird lovers,
conservationists, the heads of the logging and mining companies involved, and
local residents, urging them to stop the logging and mining in that specific
part of the country and to stop the destruction or to at least shift it further
west.

After a long, hard year of tireless
campaigning, the companies finally agreed to shift their operations further
west.  Four months after the
commencement of the new mining and logging operations, Adam received a letter
from a small group of reclusive bird watchers and conservationists that read:

“Dear Mr. A. Lone,

After
extensive research and observation on our side, we have discovered that the range
of the Blue–Backed Yellow Gonick’s habitat is much greater than previously
estimated. However, their primary nesting grounds were in the area that has
just been strip-mined and cleared of all trees. To compound the problem, this happened
during the Blue–Backed Yellow Gonick’s only breeding season of the year.

We
have managed to locate two breeding pairs and have safely relocated them to the
San Diego Zoo where efforts are now being made to start a captive breeding
progamme, which we hope will save the species.

Sincerely,

Maxine Ride

On behalf of the
Save the Blue–Backed Yellow Gonick Society”