A happy scientist announces that he has discovered a group of tigers living at altitude in the Himalayas. This is good news, he tells us, as the Indian tiger is going to be extinct everywhere else shortly and at least they'll be safe up in the Himalayas.
Hmm.
I was going to say "a naive scientist" but somehow feel that would be tautologous.
The BBC make a programme about the most elusive and remote tigers in the world, and announce how great it is that they are remote.
Short of attaching GPS transmitters to the animals and dropping them onto a Chinese roundabout at rush hour, it's hard to think what else they could have done to endanger them. So now, when the last Indian tiger has its nether regions dried to help some Chinese man with - hem hem - mid-life issues, and the price of bits of dried tiger go through the roof, conveniently it will be possible to go and round up the mountain tigers and make the last few really worth a few quid.
It's rather like a travel programme announcing how unspoilt somewhere is, or a naturalist announcing he's found an orchid that only grows on one chalk hillside in the world.
Someone's going to make a killing.
Maybe they'll become worth more as tourist attractions than willy warmers.. (seems to be working for the gorillas)
ReplyDelete4 Billion years of evolution and these are their final exit options; it depresses me what superstition and unfettered development can do.
Mentioned your blog post here; too important an overall issue to be fogetten quickly.
ReplyDelete