Which path should we take?
I wholly agree with Mark Carwardine’s column on The Sixth Extinction (Agenda, January 2018). Although many have surmised as much for decades, it was brought home starkly to me when I read the excellent exposition in 1996 entitled, The Sixth Extinction by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin. This was additionally endorsed by Elizabeth Kolbert’s essays in her Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History in 2014.
The point is, where do we go from here? My best guess is we are on an inevitable road to ultimate destruction, although in the longer term the planet will no doubt regenerate. There are too many global issues to resolve which sadly will prove impossible to solve, such as human population growth, increasing consumerism worldwide and poverty.
There is a bitter irony that the most ‘intelligent’ species to inhabit the planet has caused this devastation – and I acknowledge this as a privileged and ‘educated’ western individual who has left a huge personal footprint on the overall ecology of our planet. Indeed, it could be argued that with my trips on African safaris and my general lifestyle I have simply done my bit to kill with kindness.
In the meantime, keep doing what you can and continue to take those wonderful images which inspire us. I often offer BBC Wildlife Magazine to others once I have read it but, sadly, most refuse in favour of more popular consumer magazines.
Before I am accused of being altogether too negative, in my defence I will say I will continue to collect other people’s ubiquitous soft drinks cans along the Cleveland Way, northern England. Now which nature lover could possibly admit to dropping those? We cannot blame the urban ignorant for that particular ‘crime’. This must surely be down to the country ‘lover’ who chooses to throw the litter into the field rather than take it home. Graham Jones, Scarborough