Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 85, January 2009, pp. 1-20. | Page 9

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often the demigods in the hierarchies of the world‟s conservation organizations, in their
plush offices, Hotels and conference rooms, who are deciding which species to rescue
and which will be left to die. More often than not, the decision is entirely subjective and
may be based on no more than pettiness and personal prejudice. Each conservationist
may have their own favourite and so a species may also be sacrificed by whoever
happens to be gaining the upper hand in a particular internal feud. This is how Homo
sapiens play God in the 21st century.
The harp seal slaughter had all the ingredients of media sensation: the evil hunters, the
fluffy white pups, innocent and vulnerable, the crusaders who put their own bodies
between seal and club. No issue could be more clear-cut, and so the triage made another
of its expedient decisions. It didn‟t matter that there were literally hundreds of thousands
of seals on the ice, or that they are not strictly considered to be an endangered species.
But the very foundations of triage are rooted in division, something that the conservation
movement is no stranger to. It was not until years later that it was realized why triage had
sacrificed the monk seal. The answer lay in the complex and interrelated factors which
were killing off the species. For the realists who control most of the world‟s conservation
organizations, the monk seal presented no easy and media-communicable solutions.
Many of those attending the Rhodes monk seal conference in May 1978, had been
scientists whose professional interests lay primarily in research, not conservation. This
was a distinction not altogether clear at first, since almost every working paper was
concluded with a list of desirable protective measures. But who was to implement those
measures? The gulf between ecology in theory and conservation in practice, like so many
others in our fragmented society, is a limbo of confusion. Furthermore, it is the research,
the conferences, the Paper Mountains of ecological bureaucracy which bleed and starve
meaningful conservation of its resources, talent and ingenuity.
A detailed and ambitious project plan was written on Samos. A holistic project was
needed, not only to assure the survival of the monk seal, but also to carve out viable
alternatives for the islands, suffering the same onslaughts of mass tourism, urbanization
and pollution.
The first priority would be the creation of a network of twenty or more biogenetic
reserves in the eastern Aegean. Since the seal colonies were so small and scattered, the
„one reserve at a ti