I first posted this on 30th October 2011
So Today was a sad day for humanity and this planet!
Today the last wild Rhino was killed in Vietnam. This was the last wild Rhino left on Asia mainland.
Let me just write this again it was the LAST wild Rhino in Asia!
I know as humans we see ourselves a higher creatures on this planet and more intelligent than any other animal, but surely you have to prove that you are more intelligent than the other beasts that walk on this earth.
Just because we have managed to leave the confines of this globe, or even can create on demand something as primitive as we see it as fire, does that make us intelligent? Surely a mark of intelligence is not destroying the environment around you that supports you, especially when you have no idea how removal of just one part of that environment will effect it as a whole whole. How could removing one link in a chain reduce the strength of it or make it fail. What if the removal of just one link means it now doesn’t stretch all the way to you?
What part of this animal is so important that someone actually had to kill the very last wild one? Where did their minds not compute that there has to be a sustainable breeding population to be able to make money by killing them for what ever parts are so valuable. Its when I see stories like this that I fail to understand the intelligence of man. Even if you looked at this as an economic tragedy, there are people out there that seem happy to destroy their own income.
So when they are looking for a new job they have to explain that they used to be a Rhino hunter but the were stupid to kill the last one this killing their livelihood and now unable to feed their families they have had to find alternative employment. Is that the type of person you would employ? One that manages to destroy any future for themselves let alone your company.
But this also raises another question. Who in this day and age has the money to be having the last Rhino killed for what ever part of it the deemed necessary to ingest or put on their mantle piece? Surly if they have made enough money to pay for such a valuable commodity they must have had some intelligence to get to where they are? So where did the intelligence waiver so much that they needed that part of a poor animal.
I saw an interesting fact the other day If the entire 7 billion people that live on this planet were to live in one super city it would be the size of france. To me that seems to leave a rather large area for all the other creatures that roam this earth.
So far as we are aware this is the only planet in the universe that has life.
How is it that someone is as shorted sighted as to kill the very last of anything? Yet science estimates that we as humans destroy one species a day. that is 365 species wiped of this planet every year.
What if this planet provides everything we need? What if only this planet provides it? With all the endless possibilities in the universe, even if there was life else where, the only solutions to problems created on this planet had been provided through evolution here. We have found so many cures to so many diseases here, no rock from any other planet ever cured an ailment but bacteria helped us create antibiotics.
What if the very thing that could have cured cancer was held in that Rhinos genetic make up, or any of the the other 365 species that have been exterminated in the last year. We could be wiping out our very own chances of survival in the long term. But then if a super virus came along and wiped out this single species it would save 365 others a year and would have done nothing different to what we as a spices have done countless times. Remember the Dodo?
I suppose that we can but hope that one thing will die out in time and thats the poachers and people that believe that these animals need to be killed to fu fill what ever need they have. And then maybe, just maybe, one day they can be reintroduced in to the wild from the few precious remaining members of a dwindling species that we have managed to save in zoo’s. And maybe by then we may have figured out that we can all share this marbled rock.
I have so much respect for people that stand up and shout for this planet, people like Philippe Cousteau. People who manage to do it the right way, they are passionate about what they do and can see the failings of this species we sometimes call human. they beg and implore the people with power to have some humanity to save our neighbours that we share the earth with. One day they might save us. Their voices are quiet in the din of big business, and we know that money talks.
But at what point do those of us with common sense stand up and say wake up before its too late? Act now before we lose all of them.
Or do we wait till the very last one is gone?
lukekatt 