The Rev. Fred Morris, then the president of the Florida Council of Churches, once observed that losing a species to extinction was akin to “tearing a page from the Book of Genesis.” I take these words and the concept of our responsibility to protect and cherish creation and all the wildlife therein very seriously. 

This is just one of the reasons I support the National Wildlife Federation. Protecting and conserving threatened and endangered species, the most imperiled of species, is core to their mission, as is the conservation of what are sometimes considered “common species.” Though truly, there is nothing “common” about any wild creature.

I have a list of imperiled wildlife in Florida that I yearn to glimpse or hear in their native habitat. I want to experience them far from the houses, roads, and strip malls of suburban Florida. I want to hear and see them deep in the true wild, along the backroads, backwaters, and backwoods of wild Florida.

I was struck recently by the realization that one day we may look for birds in the air, the denizens of the swamp or pines, or the creatures of the ocean and they will be gone. Many of the species that we hold dear will have disappeared into the night of extinction from which there is no dawn. 

What if the music they provide, the yips and howls, the calls and whistles, the mighty roars, the true music of nature, was to disappear? And what have we already lost in terms of this natural music, all the notes and calls of extinct species? 

When I am lucky enough to hear the ancient trumpet call of sandhill cranes, I wonder what it must have been like to hear a cacophony of whooping cranes calling across a wet prairie as dawn emerged in days past in Florida—figures shrouded in the mist of morning, calling out as they had for centuries. That music is mostly silent now. We are all poorer for it.

Generations that came before us in Florida, now long since passed, may have heard the yips and howls of red wolves in the night. Wolves in Florida, and across the American South! What an incredible primal experience it must have been to hear them calling to a full moon. That loss is ours to bear.

When I was young, we lived on the banks of the Withlacoochee River, across the river from the Withlacoochee State Forest. This was the 1970s, and wild Florida was still strong. One night, as we gathered around a campfire, we heard a piercing, terrifying scream from across the river. I still remember all the hairs standing up on my neck.

Our neighbor on the river was born and bred along the river in a small town of fishermen and river folk. When the screams faded, he simply turned to us, and in a voice as deep as rich cane syrup, drawled, “panther.” I will never forget that moment. I have not heard one since, but hope I still may one day. Groups like NWF are working to ensure they do not go quietly into the night of extinction.

I offer this confession knowing that serious practitioners of biology and ornithology may snicker at my confessed naivete. The true and abiding sound of nature that I yearn to hear in wild Florida is the call of an Ivory-billed woodpecker, a species that is likely to be extinct. The conservation biologist in me knows what extirpation and extinction mean in a policy sense, but the dreamer in me still holds out a slim tendril of hope. Perhaps we can dream them back to us.

When I drive through or explore deep and ancient cypress swamps, river bottoms or flood plains in the Florida Panhandle or the Nature Coast, I always pause and listen periodically. I silently take my ancient Ivory-billed woodpecker plush toy out, now over 20 years old, and give it a long squeeze. I do it gingerly as I fear the day when the sound-making device inside gives out. Again, I fear losing the sounds of life to the silence of extinction.

I send forth a brief call, in part in expectation of the miracle of a response. But more importantly, a landscape that evolved with that call, that sound, that music, as an integral part of creation for the briefest of moments, has it again. 

Without clear, resolute action to cherish and safeguard the wonders of creation in Florida, we may one day look to the air, to the waters, and to the forests and see and hear nothing. I support NWF because they engage in the science, conservation, and advocacy of pulling species back from the brink of extinction. It is noble and necessary work. I deeply appreciate it. 

We can and must act to protect imperiled species. Or one day, all we might simply hear will be the sounds of extinction, a vast silence of nothingness that eludes even memory.

An edited and abridged version of this blog appeared in Florida Atlantic University’s The Invading Sea Journal. Joe Murphy is a former Wildlife Policy Specialist with the National Wildlife Federation’s Gulf Program. He submits these blog posts as an NWF supporter and alumnus.