Ptilinopus arcanus — the bird almost nobody has seen
1
specimen ever collected — shot in 1953 on Mount Kanlaon
IUCN red list: Critically Endangered · IUCN taxon ID 22691568. Some believe it may already be gone.
Known from a single specimen — one bird, one life, one record. As an accountant I know how fragile a single line of evidence is. As a painter I know how much a single living thing can hold.
The lowland forest of Negros that this dove needs has been almost entirely cleared for sugar. Endemic — found nowhere else on Earth. To keep it, we keep the mountain forest standing.
A ledger only works if you keep recording. Extinction is a number falling to zero. We choose the other column.