I have finished entering all my minor writings, into my data base, so that I can retrieve them more easily, some 200 short articles, news items, letters and book reviews. I was most prolific in the late 1970s, and it is very depressing to see how little progress has been made. In fact in many cases, if not the majority, the situation is much worse. I wrote about the trade in wildlife extensively. And today it is much much worse. I wrote about the ivory trade – both legal and illegal, And again, the situation has deteriorated. Whales are perhaps better off than they were in the late 1970s, and certainly the British seal population is in a better shape than when the government was authorising the culls I was writing about. And the otter’s recovery is an undoubted resounding success story. So perhaps those early campaigns of Friends of the Earth were not a complete waste of time. In fact looking at the campaigning and writing I did on behalf of wildlife nearly 50 years ago, it occurs to me that there might be an interesting book to be written looking back over those years when so much changed. WWF was founded in the early 1960s, the same year as Animals Magazine, where I was to publish several of my campaigning articles, and investigative journalism, together with New Scientist, where I became a regular columnist, and then onto Vole. Working for FoE, ICBP, and Fauna Preservation Society (all part-time, while I scribbled to make a living) gave me opportunities to attend important international meetings, and in those days it was possible to be involved. The IUCN General Assembly had around 1000 (possibly fewer?) delegates in 1975, the first year I attended, but now it would have around 10,000 delegates had it gone ahead this year. I was young (relatively) and enthusiastic. Now I am much older, and much more cynical about the future of wildlife. But reading all these old cuttings has made me realise that it is possible to instigate change. So here is my list of what I consider the three top priorities for the future:
1 Getting as much of what is left of the natural world under some sort of protection. It doesn’t need to be national parks or nature reserves, it just needs to NOT be turned into mono-culture agriculture.
2 A real priority is to tackle the decline of insects.
3 Human population growth MUST be reversed, particularly if those remaining want to live at a lifestyle remotely akin to what the lower average is in the developed world.
COVID19 should be a lesson to all politicians (except one of course): it shows two things. The first is the pandemic itself. Luckily, for the politicians it prioritised the old and the poor — the people the average politician bothers about least. But next time it could easily be a virus that attacks the relatively young, healthy and wealthy.
The second lesson is that politicians can take dramatic strategic action. If they treated the climate crisis and the insect crisis with the same degree of priority, there might (might) be some hope for the future. But I wouldn’t bank on it.
John Andrew Burton 