Spirit Of The Vaquita

The vaquita is a small cetacean, native to the coast of Mexico and it's not likely to last much longer. I'm a big fan of out with the old, but not when the cause of the destruction of a species is all because of man's selfishness.

I hope that there is something that can be done to save these cartoonishly cute creatures before they are consigned to the evolutionary dustbin.

We can't make these world into a museum by conserving every species but we could at least give it a go and see what happens!

A World Without Humans

Imagine for second that humans simply ceased to exist. One day we all just disappeared. What would happen to the world once we were gone?

I've been watching a really interesting show called The Future Is Wild which is a rather pointless, but fun, exercise in evolutionary futurology. I'm always upset that so many creatures in the past died out before I got here to see them. Now I'm annoyed of the possibility of just as fabulous creatures in the future who I'm going to miss out on (for a very obvious reason!).

Thinking about a life after humanity I started reading up on the possible causes of our demise.... and that's how I found the VHEMT, The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

Although I think their dream of a designed demise of humankind is highly unlikely (humans are bloody annoyingly unpredictable and stubborn) I do agree with the idea of less people. And no I'm not into extermination either. But a lower birth rate might make this world a more pleasant place to live less people PLUS environmental concern would make this world a fun place again.

Sadly humans tend to like their boring, safe world. Hopefully one day nature will rise up and bite us on the arse. Then we'll all have to get back to living again.

Animal Holocaust

I'm not some bleeding heart anti hunting campaigner. I believe humans have a part to play in nature, and hunting sustainably is one way we can interact with nature. However... I have no sympathy or tolerance for the arrogant bastards who hunt and kill creatures to extinction. Worse still are those who kill just for fun or profit. If you kill an animal you need to use it: food, clothing, something useful. And you can't kill the animal if killing it causes it's species to go extinct as that is wasteful.

Some cultures today understand this, taking what they need but never too much and using every last part of the animal (see American aborigines). That is how nature works... nothing wasted.

So it distress' me to see things such as this and this and this. I could go on. It beggers belief that people could so callously do things like this. I hope they suffer painful, slow deaths themselves.

The Holocene Extinction Event

What is that I hear you ask? Something to do with the dinosaurs? Nope. We are in the middle of the Holocene Extinction Event; you just need to read about the extinction of the Baiji that is literally happening at this moment in time to realise it.

If there is some afterlife where we meet our ancestors I'm going to slap them all round the face. All the most exciting animals we know about were bloody killed off by them... imagine a world with Haast's Eagles, the Moa-nalo and the Thylacine. What a wonderful world that'd be.

And still we go on... killing and raping, our successful programme for world domination. Is hating one's own species wrong?