There
is a saying in English that Nature is raw in tooth and claw.
Incontrovertible
it may be, but it does require some modification. Because the species homo sapiens, unquestionably a part of Nature, does not
follow the rules that appear to govern every other species. Our species has
introduced the strange concept of compassion into all its relationships. And
this is exactly what is threatening to destroy the world as we know it today.
Compassion probably has its origins
in our religions, which, for the most part, are governed by the extremely
questionable idea that human beings are at the centre of everything.
These less than epoch-making
reflections are stimulated by the David Attenborough series, Our Planet, which sets out to show the glory, beauty and mystery
of the life cycle that dominates every other species, except ours. In one
extraordinary sequence after another, these films show that for most species, Nature
really is raw in tooth and claw, and this is what keeps them ticking over. In
different parts of the world at different times, tens of thousands, even
millions, of creatures gather in vast
agglomerations, basically in search of food, the higher creatures in the food
chain feasting on the lower, with not a sign of compassion evident.
Although some of these events draw
millions, Attenborough leaves us in no doubt that human activities have already
greatly reduced their numbers, usually because of the immense human demand for
space, for habitats, because of our human assumption that every aspect of life
should be available to the sacred objective of satisfying the unquenchable
greed of humanity. Fifty years ago, he intones, the first man walked on the
moon. Since then, our human population
has doubled, a really striking fact for anyone who has lived through both
events. Meantime, bison, which were
numbered in millions, are now down to 30,000, 100 million sharks are killed
every year, 90 per cent of all large oceanic hunters have disappeared from the
oceans, and without them at the top of the food chain, the ocean community is
changing irrevocably, “beyond recognition.”
The Attenborough film led me to have
the fantastic thought that the world is made up of collectivities, each obeying
its own rules, yet somehow mysteriously collaborating with other collectivities
in the desperate search for the food
necessary to their survival.
For example, spinner dolphins of up
to 10,000 in a single pod gather off the coast of Costa Rica, an extremely
companionable species who touch each other and talk, communicate in their
mysterious way, closely shadowed by the more powerful yellow fin tuna, both
looking for a species of fish so common that it is of no interest even to the
voracious humans, the lantern fish, tiny fish as long as a finger, which gather
in their millions, in groups mobilized by the dolphins, driven by them towards
the surface, where they fall prey to the
many species that have gathered especially for this purpose.
Or, the series produces an amazing
shot of the blue whale, the largest animal ever to have existed, 30 metres in
length, weighing 200 tonnes, of which there once were three million, now down
to a few thousands, observable in our time only in the gulf of California along
he Mexican Pacific coast, in a photograph showing mother and baby whale, eight
metres in length, weighing six tonnes, “ in the most intimate mother-calf
interaction every captured on film,” states the commentary.
Or how to explain the amazing
intuition of the flamingos who gather from hundreds of miles, whenever --- and
this may happen only once in ten years --- an immense cloudburst occurs over
one of our apparently dead deserts. The flamingos arrive in their thousands
with the intention of breeding. Very
quickly, the cloudburst dissipates, the water is no more, the baby chicks, just
emerged from the egg, unable yet to fly, have to begin to walk in search of
water, the only thing that can keep them alive, shepherded along the way of the
knowing adult birds.
Even in the planet’s most remote areas,
such as the Antarctic, apparently devoid of life throughout the winter, life emerges
from the depths, springing up with the arrival of the sun’s warmth, drawing up
vast swarms --- numbering in the trillions ---- of krill, tiny organisms that
form the basic food for many of the superior creatures of the deep. Gentoo
penguins, a smaller variety that have spent most of their lives at sea, now
come towards the shore in search of the
krill, and lay themselves open to attack from the humpback whales, most of
which have headed for the Antarctic waters, making journeys of 8,000 kilometres
to get there so they can feast on the krill, and on the penguins, their first
meal in months, according to the commentary.
But these are three collectivities, krill, penguins, whales, that gather
to collaborate in ensuring the survival of each.
Attenborough, in commentary, remarks
that the waters immediately north of the Antarctic ocean are the roughest on
the planet, providing huge storms that smash the ice, and open the oceans to the
albatross, the most majestic of birds with their 10 metre wing span, whose
chicks must spend a year before growing to flight, but then, once airborne,
they manage to stay out at sea for the rest of their lives. I understand this information about the rough
seas, because I was born and grew to adulthood in the south part of the South
Island of New Zealand, surrounded by persistently rough seas, our climate
dictated by the Roaring Forties, the gales that sweep westward across the world
south of Australia, then hit our Southern Alps along the spine of the South
Island, and drop huge quantities of water,
leaving us, 50 or 100 miles further on,
to live a comfortable life with a moderate rainfall.
It seems that in almost everything,
our feeling, our compassion, our intelligence, our understanding of how the
world works, our species is in fact the dominant one. And yet, for all our
brains, our science, our examination of the world that surrounds us, how is it that the decisions we make are leading us inexorably to destroy the fine
system that Nature has bequeathed to us.
Attenborough makes no secret of the
fact that all is not yet lost. In various places, where our conscience has been
aroused collectively and we have managed to take international action, we have succeeded in
allowing declining species to revive, in some places spectacularly so. In these instances, the earth has in fact shown
a remarkable resilience.
And this eight-part series ends with
a story from one of the most all-pervasive disasters that has ever occurred,
the meltdown of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986.
The town of 100,000 people became instantly uninhabitable, a ghost town, utterly
deserted by order of the government, declared to be uninhabitable for the next
20,000 years.
Yet, within ten years, vegetation was
growing again in Chernobyl, animals began to appear, roe deer, horses, even the
top predator from wild Europe, as wolves moved back in, until today there are
more wolves living in the exclusion zone than outside it.
I remember in the early 1970s sitting
through day after day of testimony given about Nature and its works by scientists testifying on
behalf of the James Bay Cree, and hearing from them a most amazing fact. Every habitat in Nature is already occupied to
its maximum carrying capacity by some animal or other. Thus, every intervention by humans in any habitat must be preceded by the
most careful study, minute scrutiny, great sensitivity to the needs of whatever
animals are likely to be disturbed by our actions.
At about the same time, I learned of
a long experiment conducted over 25 years on a small island in Lake Superior,
where the resident populations of moose and wolves were left to organize their lives without interference
from humans. The result was that they
kept themselves in perfect balance, neither the wolves nor the moose ever
gaining the upper hand. Nature, it seems, knows whereof it is dealing.
David Attenborough’s monumental
series gives us the same message. If only we human beings could keep our hands
to ourselves, mind our own business, let Nature get on with its beautiful
system, if only we could glory in what has been bequeathed to us, all would be
well.
I have noticed hopeful markers along
the way of my life. When I was introduced to the James Bay Cree, still living
their subsistence life in the 1960s, I discovered a people whose ethic was not
that of Western religions, but rather of their own understanding of how Nature
works. They invested everything, every animal with whom they were sharing the
land, every tree, rock, the very wind itself, with a spirit of its own that
they dare not violate, for fear of repercussions.
It has always struck me as a terrible
irony that at the very moment in history when we desperately need to learn what
those old hunters were telling us, we were invading their hunting territories
and offering them false promises for a brighter future.
Ah well, as someone I know keeps repeating,
Wot the hell! Wot the hell, toujours gai, toujours gai.
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