The Atitlán Grebe
Conservation Status: Extinct
Tracks featuring this species:
Alex Hentze and Ch’umilkaj - ‘Poq’
The Atitlán grebe (Podilymbus gigas) is an extinct water bird that was native to Lake Atitlán in Guatemala.The lake is surrounded by villages in which indigenous Maya culture is still present. The Maya people of Atitlán - predominantly Tz'utujil and Kaqchikel - called the Atitlán grebe poc (or poq in Tz'utujil) after the low ‘poc-poc-poc’ of a parent bird calling to its chicks.
First described to the international scientific community in 1929, American ecologist Anne LaBastille (1933 - 2011) worked relentlessly to save the bird from extinction, but ultimately became - in her own words - “perhaps the first wildlife ecologist to document in detail a species’ agonizing plunge into oblivion, and to witness most of the factors—biological, geological, political, and social—that caused this tragedy” over a period of 25 years.
These factors included the introduction of invasive fish species from the late 1950s; the 1976 Guatemala earthquake; pollution; habitat loss; and finally regional war and conflict throughout the 1980s that hindered conservation efforts. A game warden hired by LaBastille to protect the grebes, Edgar Bauer, was murdered by unidentified assailants in 1982.
The last two Atitlán grebes were seen in 1989.
Illustration By: Vickie Amarilis
Climate connections
Lake Atitlán faces many environmental challenges today, including from pollution and climate change. One of the impacts of untreated wastewater and runoff from pesticides and fertilizers entering the lake has been increased eutrophication - a process in which nutrients accumulate in a body of water. In turn, this has caused harmful cyanobacteria blooms to appear in Lake Atitlan, with severe implications for water quality and biodiversity. Climate change also contributes to these harmful algal blooms since they prefer warmer temperatures and thrive under increasingly extreme oscillations between droughts and wet periods.
In her account of the Atitlán grebe’s extinction, Anne LaBastille notes that the reeds (tul) around the edge of the lake “were the only place where the pocs could court, nest, roost, and hide from danger”. These plants, which have been harvested by indigenous people to weave mats for more than 800 years and provide invaluable habitat for wildlife, also serve to filter toxins out of the water in a process called phytodepuration. While it might be too late for the Atitlán grebe, planting more reeds and protecting the lake’s reedbeds is a good example of how biodiversity and climate change are connected, and how finding solutions to one of these crises can help to mitigate the other.
Read more about the connections between biodiversity loss and climate change.
