Like quite a number of local people, I have been stricken with a bout of the lurgy. This has left me with a dry cough and makes speaking, and particularly singing, something to be minimised. In fact, one day I was feeling so sorry for myself that I watched some daytime TV. Thankfully I am now on the mend, and so TV viewing has returned to the evening slot.
Daytime TV told me that for £2 a month, I could save a lonely penguin, a maternal polar bear, an elegant jaguar or a beautiful mountain leopard? I was astonished that so much could be done for apparently so little. However, the sheer volume of such adverts from World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) caused me to reflect on the needs of these creatures, and so, because I can understand a desire to help any animal in a practical and sympathetic way without the need for sentimentality, I dug out some facts surrounding the reduction in their numbers during the span of my own lifetime..
As to the problems of the polar bear etcetera, two factors dominate. First; the loss of habitat and secondly; a reduction in their food supply. Given the fixed resources of the planet, it is clear that these two factors are due to the rise in human population. This rising from 2.4 billion in 1939 to 7.5 billion in 2019. In the case of Britain it rose from 46 to 66 million. We can confidently deduce that the problems facing what we used to call ‘wild life,’ are caused by humanity and its propensity to cover the landscape with cement and tarmac.
This raises huge questions to which the World Wide Fund for Nature, (WWF) does not directly proffer solutions. It chooses instead to treat the symptoms. No doubt it has wider ideas, but has decided to focus on particular animals at the top of their own food chain.
Their adverts therefore made me ask what, exactly, can they do for the Penguin and the Polar Bear with £2. An obvious solution would be to increase the animals’ natural food supply as this would give them chance to adapt to some loss of habitat. If Polar Bears and Penguins both lived in the Artic Region it would be sensible to feed the Penguins and let the Polar Bears eat them. However as polar bears already eat those seals which live in the Arctic, I reckon that WWF should put the £2 towards feeding the Sand Eel, Pilchard and Mackerel which are eaten by seals. More fish means more seals; more seals means more polar bears.
To push this thinking a little further, WWF might consider the humble shrimp which is food for fish. If they put the full weight of their mighty lobbying machine behind a campaign to ‘Save the Shrimp’, (and all the lower life forms) the whale, polar bear, seal and penguin would then be able to sort out their feed (if not habitat) problems for themselves. This could then allow the WWF to reduce its advertising & admin costs together with the time spent at global summits. Nor would it need to employ third world sewing machinists to manufacture cuddly toys to encourage donors, as I’m sure UK donors would be happy with a plastic shrimp made in Sheffield.
Some readers may choose to see such ideas as tongue in cheek: others may remember a few years ago when I discussed how problems become impossible to resolve unless a) the root definition of the problem is reached or, b) when the people involved are not themselves clear as to how their own personal interests differ from those of the cause they espouse. I illustrated the point by describing how an early Saxon Bishop of York was loved and revered by half of his flock but doubted by those who could not figure out when he was speaking on behalf of the Church or when in his own interests.
Remaining in Yorkshire, what about the chap who went out on the cold wind-swept Ilkley Moor without his hat? A folk song explains how he caught a cold, died and was buried in the earth. It concludes by pointing out that his friends eventually got him back, when eating the duck that ate the worms that had eaten Owen. A moral aspect of this tale being, that the food chain does not start at the top but at the bottom.
But I still wouldn’t bet on a charitable appeal to feed the plankton?
However, a wider moral point was summed up by the medical surgeon who said to me the other week. “I believe that we should treat the person and not the condition.” Nothing lives forever, and when we analyse any situation we need to consider more deeply than the immediately obvious. Talking of which brought to mind the following thought:
Do you realise that in about 40 years, we’ll have millions of old ladies walking around with tattoos?
View from the Pew 