Christmas is full of animals. Some are stuffed and roasted. Others cluster around a manger, wondering what this newborn man-cub is doing in their hay. Along the mantelpiece, a procession of cards featuring animals of the Arctic —polar bears, reindeer, wisecracking penguins — and of the English winter woodland — badgers, foxes, deer, squirrels and, of course, the ubiquitous robin. It’s all very hearth-warming.

But outside, away from the fireplace, the picture is very different. It’s unseasonably warm this year. Here in England, there’s not a snowflake in sight. The breeze is almost balmy. Winter is forced to sparkle with electric lights — draped from every eave and framing each door — and the icicles are plastic simulacra. The animals and birds — the real ones, that is — are vanishing faster than we can count: each species lost like a star snuffed out. We barely register the pinprick, staring up at the velvet night, as the darkness spreads.

So here, on the cusp of the turning year, is a plea and a prayer and a Christmas list, based on my favourite song of the season, a hymn to the disappeared and disappearing, a toast to the empty places at our global table and raising a glass to missing friends.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me…

Twelve mountain pygmy possums

This mouse-sized marsupial has the longest life-span of any small terrestrial mammal. Given a decent supply of Bogong moths, a mountain pygmy possum can live to twelve years, producing a litter of three-four young annually. The few thousand left on the mountain slopes of south-eastern Australia are unlikely to live that long. They hibernate beneath the snow each winter, and the combined effects of global warming and ski tourism have pushed this little creature to the edge. IUCN Red List: Critically Endangered.

Eleven snub-nosed monkeys

‘Primates in Peril’, a report compiled last year by a consortium including scientists from the IUCN, Bristol Zoo and International Primatological Society listed 25 of the world’s most endangered primate species, with the Tonkin snub-nosed monkey coming in at no. 11. It is a delicate, long-limbed creature with a black back, white front and a ruff of soft orange fur around its neck. It, like more than half (yes, half) of all primate species, is at risk of becoming extinct — largely due to the decimation of its forest habitat.

Ten shots of whiskey...

...to numb the horror and grief at the sheer scale of the environmental catastrophe that is unfolding around us and which we go through life mostly highly successfully ignoring. The elephant in the room indeed — a whole herd of them, with a blue whale thrown in.

Nine angelshark angels

Like the other 234 shark species on the IUCN’s Red List, the angelshark (Squatina squatina) population has plummeted — by more than 80 per cent in the past 30 years. To highlight the plight of this dappled bottom-dwelling beauty the ‘Angelshark Action Plan’ was launched earlier in December. The report was written by nine good men and women, who represent, for me, the real angels. Not the feathered variety hanging on your tree, but the activists and scientists who form the extremely thin blue line between the species’ survival and extinction.

Eight scaly anteaters

All eight pangolin species are listed on the IUCN Red List ranging from ‘Vulnerable’ to ‘Critically Endangered’. These animals are not ‘dying out’ because of climate change or habitat destruction — they’re simply being killed. More pangolin are poached than elephants, tigers and rhinos put together — over a million in the past decade. The name comes from the Malay word ‘pengguling’ meaning something that rolls up. Tucked up into a ball, the pangolin’s keratin scales offer a formidable defence against natural predators — but none at all against poachers, who simply pick the creature up as though it came conveniently gift-wrapped in its own skin.

Seven forest owlets

Although, my true love, if you only manage to get me one of these, that would be a miracle — there are so few. This little square-headed owlet with saucer-like yellow eyes was thought to be extinct for over a century. It was rediscovered in 1997, in Maharashtra, 113 years after its last confirmed sighting and comes in at no. 7 on the ‘Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered’ (EDGE) list of critically endangered birds.

Six Christmas Island frigatebirds

Well, I couldn’t have a Christmas list without a Christmas Island frigatebird now, could I? This rare seabird is found on only three nesting sites on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. Its greatest threat comes not from people, but from yellow crazy ants (I kid you not), a voracious invasive species that is threatening the delicate balance of the island’s ecosystem.

Five big ones

The ‘Big Five’ are the ‘trophy animals’ of African game hunting: elephant, lion, leopard, rhino, and Cape buffalo. Along with the giant panda, these iconic animals have the instant charisma necessary for mobilising public opinion and spearheading conservation campaigns. But, we should not let the biggies overshadow the rest. “When human populations are at risk, we do not just rescue the celebrities and high-earners,” as Richard Girling puts it in his book The Hunt for the Golden Mole. The object of his particular quest is so small and so rare that it has never been sighted, the only evidence for its existence a fragment of jawbone found in a regurgitated owl pellet.

Four Dinaga bushy-tailed cloud rats

Because — as Girling’s subtitle avers — all creatures great and small do matter. And that includes “the woylie, the northern muriqui, the long-footed potoroo... Perrier’s sifaka, and the Ethiopian water mouse.”

Three hairy-eared dwarf lemurs

In order to declare a species extinct, 50 years must have elapsed since the last confirmed sighting. This particular lemur disappeared in 1875, and was declared extinct in 1945. But “in 1967 came the miracle. A researcher in Madagascar reached into a hole in a tree and out came the hairy-eared dwarf lemur. It would prove... to be the very briefest of resurrections. Darkness closed again, and there was not another ‘official’ sighting until 1989.” Who knows if there are any left in 2016, or if they will make it to see in the New Year? Still, ‘Lazarus species’ like these offer a glimmer of hope that we are not as all-knowing as we think we are…

Two turtle doves

Because, like so many other recently common bird species, the turtle dove is now a rarity. The symbol of romantic fealty, the dove’s distinctive purring coo is the soundtrack for the gentle twinning of hearts. Peace on earth, goodwill to all men…

And an aardvark…

Partly because it’s the first thing in the dictionary, but mainly because this animal is so odd that it has an entire zoological order — Tubulidenta — all to itself. This makes it, if not the rarest mammal on earth, then certainly the most evolutionarily distinct.

...in a pear tree.

(preferably the Plymouth pear tree.)

So if, this Christmas, you happen to see a shark-finned angel wandering along, cradling a pangolin in his arms, with a forest owlet on his shoulder, and bearing an aardvark in a pear tree, well, you know where to send him...

Anita Roy is a writer, editor and publisher

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