Extinction

If you are free this Friday evening (26th November), then come along to an evening of Song, Music and Story at the Cabragh Wetlands Centre, starting at 8.00pm. It is so important to maintain culture and traditions in a convivial atmosphere. You will be most welcome.
 
A few weeks ago we printed a small article focusing on the good news about tiger habitats being preserved in the kingdom of Bhutan, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. This weekend the Sunday Times brought a dose of reality with the news that the South China tiger is now functionally extinct. Surveys have found no trace of it in the wild and all 100 South China tigers in Chinese zoos have been proven by genetic testing to be cross-breeds. The genetic purity of the South China tiger, believed to be the common ancestor of all other tiger species, has been lost for ever. Within the last 30 or so years, three other species have become extinct – the Balinese, Javan and Caspian tigers have all disappeared. Those that are left (perhaps just 3200 individuals in the wild) are still subject to poaching for their fur and, most worryingly, for other body parts for use in traditional Far Eastern medicines.
 
We can only give our best wishes to the international conferences and organizations that are working heroically to save the remaining tigers. Like every other living species, tigers have taken about 4,000,000,000 (four billion) years to evolve – the same time as you and me. Indeed we are related to them. If you go back enough generations, humans share common ancestors with the tiger, just as surely as about 7,000,000 years ago there were creatures living, some of whose children became humans while others became chimpanzees and others gorillas.
 
Man emerged just 2,500,000 years ago – that is 100,000 generations of identifiable humans (about one generation every 25 years, for argument’s sake). Why do we believe that the values and lifestyle we have developed within the last mere 15 generations are so important and so right, that it is acceptable to destroy the natural environment that has produced and sustained so many different yet closely connected and interlinked forms of life over so many billions of years?
 
We live in an era of extraordinary technology and wonderful cultural and scientific achievements. Yet for every gain, there are losses. Yes, it is great to combat disease and extend human life, but the consequence is more people, more environmental degradation and more species lost. With each lost species, the fragile web that binds all life is stretched and damaged. The losses cannot be replaced. We need a bit more Socrates – logical questioning and answering to probe far more deeply into the consequences and implications of how we are living. Should our schools teach a bit more about how ideas and values are created and a little less about economic growth and technological wizardry? Should we spend more time thinking about balance and sustainability and a bit less about job creation and economic ‘progress’?