Evening all. Or should I say morning? It's half past midnight. I can't sleep, so I'm just going to write a short piece about a comment made by Springwatch presenter Chris Packham, back in 2008.
"I'd eat the last panda if I could have the money we've spent on panda conservation back on the table for me to do more sensible things with."
Naturally, this provoked a lot of negative response. However...
If/when the Giant Panda inevitably becomes extinct, what would have been the point of spending all those hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to save it when all we'd done was allow it a few more years of existence? We've spent all this money, and for what? So we can admire it for a little while longer?
Essentially, what it is, is funding prolonging the inevitable. Would you spend £20 on a chocolate bar, knowing it would only last about 5 minutes? The situation with the panda is basically the same thing, only on a much vaster scale. The panda is just about beyond help. It cannot be saved.
Should we ever find ourselves in a situation where there is just one panda left on the planet, i would quite happily make it into burgers if I could recoup all those many thousands of pounds so that I could do something more realistic with it.
Because let's face it, saving the Giant Panda is not a realistic target.
No comments:
Post a Comment