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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/09/its-up-to-each-of-us-to-help-save-life-on-earth-i-love-this-challenge>
"Extinction. In 1844 Ketill Ketilsson won the race to grab the last pair of
great auks. They were nesting on Iceland’s Eldey Island. Millions of these
penguin-like birds had been slaughtered for feather-stuffed quilts to keep
Europe’s burgeoning human population warm. Ketilsson strangled the two but
tripped over and broke their egg. Never mind, he won the reward being offered
by museums in Copenhagen for the final specimens.
A perverse market rule on species had been established: the rarer a species
gets, the more valuable it becomes. It came too late for those who killed the
last dodo, moa or Steller’s sea cow – but look at the money now going into
resurrecting mammoths and thylacines.
Extinction is forever but it is mostly ho-hum for the rulers of our age of
materialism. In this world of commercial expedience, it can even be a worthy
thing. In 1888 the Tasmanian parliament legislated a one-pound bounty on
thylacine heads – more than 2,000 bounties were paid – in its successful bid to
“extirpate” the species.
The rate of loss of nature has accelerated ever since and in my short lifetime
three-quarters of the world’s volume of wildlife has been eradicated, including
most of the big specimens of human-edible fish.
The Maugean skate is a contemporary headache. This ancient fish survived when
the dinosaurs didn’t but is now having its habitat polluted by problematic
industrial fish farm activity in Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast. To
save the profits of the foreign-owned salmon corporations both the prime
minister, Anthony Albanese, and opposition leader, Peter Dutton, have promised
laws to guarantee the fish pens – but not the Maugean skate.
Environmentalists are a problem because they publicise the reality of impending
extinctions. Corporations have had to have parliaments pass laws banning
peaceful protests in forests and near fish pens and to criminalise the
nature-defending ringleaders. Eco-sabotage is subsidised while eco-rescue risks
a jail sentence.
Nevertheless, the polls show a huge majority of Australians want to end native
forest logging to save what’s left of koalas, greater gliders, swift parrots,
masked owls and black cockatoos. So far the corporate lobbyists have managed to
keep the big-party politicians subsidising the forest destruction even though
primary schoolchildren, and the national minister for the environment, know
that it is a prime cause of habitat loss and extinction."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
