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conservation nation
Would you pay almost £8,000 sterling to save one bird?
(or roughly 430,000 baht in todays money.)
Before you get any strange ideas, we are talking about
the feathered variety. The black-tailed Godwit no less.
Don’t worry - I hadn’t heard of it either until last week,
when it suddenly became the focus of attention in this
part of the UK. Forget the Scottish referendum. This is
the really important stuff.
Apparently the black-tailed Godwit (or BTG for the
sake of brevity) is a large wading bird which feeds on
things that wriggle around in mudflats. Not just any
old mudflats either, but the ones just across the river
Humber from Hull which our not so little feathered
friends currently call home.
At this point a little clarification won’t go amiss. Hull
sits on the north bank of a pretty big river called the
Humber, which not only separates us from the alien
peoples of North Lincolnshire, but is also home to a few
other ports. Which is how the dilemma of the local BTG
population came about, when Able UK, a huge ports
and maritime management company, chose Godwit
territory on which to develop a new port complex.
Conservationists were not happy, so Able UK have
promised to spend a staggering £60 million pounds
(over 3 thousand million baht) on relocating the BTG
colony. Quite how the number of BTGs involved was
established hasn’t been revealed, but clearly there are
a lot of them. And they won’t live on any old mudflats
either. The millions of pounds are needed to re-create
just the right kind of boggy environment for them on the
opposite bank of the river.
You can imagine the ensuing debate. When it comes to
money us Yorkshire folk have almost as bad a reputation
as the Scots. On the other hand we Brits can be quite
sentimental when it comes to protecting endangered
species, which includes the BTG. This is a country
where we even make little tunnels under roads to keep
hedgehogs safe from traffic.
But looking at the bigger picture, are we beginning to
invest too much in sometimes vain attempts to alter the
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course of nature? And do we only care about the cute
or impressive looking species like pandas, elephants,
and - well BTGs?
China for example has a massive panda breeding
programme which boasts the recent arrival of panda cub
triplets. Left to their own devices pandas would probably
now be extinct. Largely because they are not very good
at breeding or replenishing stocks of mulberry. But as
far as the environment is concerned pandas don’t keep
any other animal species under control, so in the cold
light of day are we battling to save them purely because
they are cute, while confining all future generations to
lives in captivity?
Meanwhile in South Africa elephants are again causing
problems, because previous bans on hunting them
resulted in their numbers increasing so much that they
are now destroying the very environments which sustain
other wildlife. Culling has become inevitable, although
the conservationists message has become so emotive
that the likes of the Kruger National Park would prefer
not to publicise precise details for fear of upsetting their
visitors.
Like most people I love animals and abhor animal cruelty.
At the same time though I eat meat which is sustainably
farmed or hunted, and again, like most people, have
been brought up to distinguish between the need to eat
and the need to care for - and manage - wildlife. But I
have to question the logic in spending a huge amount
of money on relocating a colony of seabirds which are
equipped with wings, and are no doubt quite capable of
relocating themselves should the need arise.
This weeks word is ‘bionomics’. The study of the mode
of life of organisms in their natura habitat and their
adaptations to their surroundings.
Just a long winded explanation of a word which means
pretty much the same as ‘ecology’.
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from sources believed to be reliable, AWOL cannot guarantee
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