FINAL CALL

A relic of the distant past, the brave Djibouti spurfowl can still be heard in a disappearing African forest

- DANIËL NELSON

THE FOREST OF Day IS A MISTAKE. IT LIES IN DJIBOUTI, a hot desert country in the Horn of Africa, where temperatures can rise into the 40s and where the landscape is made of volcanic rock. The vast majority of Djibouti is a dustbowl. But when its landscape formed millions of years ago and tectonic plates collided, part of it was thrust so high into the air that it penetrated a cooler airstream. Reaching over 2,000m high, Djibouti's mountaintops are the exception to its desert climate. Its peaks are bathed in wet clouds, allowing for a forest to grow. Here, there are evergreen trees, such as olives and junipers, many animals, including leopards and antelopes, and a vanishingly rare bird known as the Djibouti spurfowl.

The forest is called the Forest of Day, and it sounds miraculous, sitting as it does above a high barren desert, but it's doomed. Djibouti has become hotter in recent centuries, with its mountainsides drying up, and current rates of climate change are intensifying that heat further. So the Forest of Day - which, on a geological timescale, has only just come into existence - is already collapsing. Droughts are increasing, and any animal that can leave is moving away.

The Djibouti spurfowl, which cannot leave because it needs forest cover to survive, has become Critically Endangered, chained to a dwindling forest. More than 90 per cent of the population has already vanished, and 200-500 individuals remain.

Like I said, the Forest of Day is a mistake. Its growth period was a mere blip in climatic time. If it disappears, the birds disappear with it.