Tigers kill people.

People live in fear for their lives and for the lives of their children where tigers roam. For decades we have been attempting to protect tigers. But if I am to feed my children I must push into the land of the tigers and take an acre of ground that my children may eat. Only one acre out of such a vast amount of land! But because of relentless human population growth many poor people, not just one, are forced to take from tiger areas what they can. And people get killed. Too, the enormous commercial  value of these tigers for their bones and meat and hide and indeed for their very whiskers – would, for poor people, give them the wealth of kings. Tempting indeed.

Tigers kill children. Small pox kills children. One of the triumphs of the WHO is that they have eliminated small pox. Polio, another scourge of society, is also close to being eradicated. By killing all tigers we will remove another danger to humans.

Alternatively, as a world people, we could make proper provision for tigers so they are not competing with people for living space. The half-way solutions that exist at the moment neither accommodate the needs of people nor the needs of these big cats. A shooting policy would have an honesty about it. What exists at the moment allows the numbers of tigers to melt downwards allowing us to say, when they finally become extinct – ‘well, we did our best’. We will know it to be a lie.

Great organisations like WWF and Greenpeace and many more do wonderful work to get people concerned for nature conservation. In spite of years of committed work in this area the great majority of people, if not hostile to conservation, are at best indifferent. And because of this indifference species are slipping away to extinction.

We no longer have the luxury of time on our side. So what if conservation groups were to join together in a world-wide event for nature that would involve many hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously – that surely would put nature conservation high up in people’s awareness? Fine – so what could we do?

What we should do would involve children. Why? Because children, in time, will be the next generation who will have to confront conservation issues probably even more urgent that the problems we have today. If we can instill in children a conservation ethic and an understanding of what is required we will have done a great thing indeed. So what might we do?

We might create the first Children-of-the-World Nature Reserve. This would be a reserve created by coins and other small change from children from around the world. The reserve would be ‘owned’ by children. Millions of children  who had donated coins to this project would go to bed at night knowing that there was a special place for animals and birds and butterflies in the world that they had helped to create. That would be a great thing.

The reserve would be managed on behalf  of the children by professional parks people. It should likely be established in a tropical or in a semi-tropical location where biodiversity is particularly high. It would need to be in a place that was politically stable and of relative ease of access if children are to visit.

A crucial understanding in the running of this special nature reserve is that through the internet and newsletters and other means of communications that the millions of children who ‘own’ the reserve would be informed about news events in their reserve. They might be told of the hatching of turtles or the discovery of a new species of butterfly or the first recorded sighting of a rare bird in the reserve. They would learn too what is required to manage such a place and they would get some understanding of the requirements if wild things are to survive and of the importance of the protection of habitats.

The key value in all of this is that when these children, in their millions, grow to adulthood they will take with them a far more mature and informed attitude to what is required if we are to accommodate other species on this planet. This heightened awareness will, in time, be carried by these new adults into business decisions and into political decisions – all to the benefit of nature. Done on such a scale where the children of the whole world become involved will also galvanise adults too to reflect on the need to change our behaviour in many issues if species are not to become extinct.

Yes, such a great undertaking will require considerable organisation. But clearly at this stage nothing less than an event on a world-wide scale is now needed to shake us out of our complacency. This could be a wonderfully mad undertaking with many organisations coming together to make it happen. I know we could do it. It only takes excitement and a sense of fun to visualize what would be involved in this.

The first step would be to establish an Organizing Committee who would draw this idea out further. Beside one or two key conservationists the committee would need on board hard-nosed managers and high-profile political figures to open doors to governments to seed the idea further. High profile entertainers would be encouraged to lend their names and help in other ways too to advertise what the event is about and to further generate enthusiasm.

Children’s TV personalities  and school teachers would be enormously helpful in explaining to children why they should help in bringing such a special nature reserve into existence.

No money collected from children should be used for anything except for the creation of the reserve. That means that all necessary expenses that will be incurred outside that must be covered by other means. Altruistic rich people who have a deep interest in nature conservation might be a possibility.

This, in broad-strokes, is an idea that if taken on board by conservation groups would, as a world event, drive forward a conservation ethic that we have not experience to date. In its scale it could be an enormous wake-up call around the world that something needs to be done by the world’s people if nature is to be protected.

I am convinced that we could do it. I would like to hear your comments to see where we might take this idea further.

Conservation, in the end, is the politics of numbers. Without the numbers how can we bring about change? It is that honest and that brutal.

I am convinced that those who engage in conservation and who hold the view  that nature should be protected from harm tend to be genuinely kind people – but they still don’t have sufficient numbers on their side. Many more are needed to sweep into law what needs to be done. Some local issues may on occasion indeed be won due to the sustained metal of the few. And our admiration must go to such people. But why, in spite of stirring talks by many and fine television programmes aimed at winning concerns for the damage we do to nature do we still persist in our indifference?

Roger Pielke Jr. in his book on the Climate Fix raises an issue that should be considered by all conservationists. He suggests that policies to reduce carbon emissions have so far been singularly unsuccessful. He expresses this failure in what he calls the iron law of climate politics. He is of the view that when policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on emission reduction, it is economic growth that will win out every time.

All of us need to focus on what Roger Pielke is saying here. This is where the battle lines are. This is where they always have been. This is the politics of numbers in operation. The majority want the ‘progress of production’ that will manufacture things to generate wealth and jobs. Yes, they would like things to be right by nature – but not at the expense of jobs.

If we are ever to get by this impasse conservationists must look this reality straight in the eye – and grind out a practical solution to this disparity.

Can anyone who makes a hit on this blog come up with a realistic solution to this problem that over-hangs all conservation considerations?

We need to sweep away a number of illusions. If we are to become effective in conservation we must first stop deluding ourselves: we are not winning the battle for conservation.

On our behalf government agencies and others create nature reserves, sanctuaries, national parks, biosphere reserves and other similar undertakings in an attempt to protect wildlife. We develop national and international laws to protect endangered species. We put in place agencies to fight illegal trafficking in species and in species’ products: yet with all of that in place we are still not winning the battle.

True we can point at a number of skirmishes that we have won, or appear to have won – the whooping crane project, the Arabian Oryx undertaking, the work to protect the nana goose. But these successes are only campaigns in a fractious battle. The real struggle is not for swamplands; it is not for Indian rhino, it is not even for ozone or rain forests. If conservation is to succeed the engagement must be for the minds of people.

Books on conservation often offer us lists of species that have become extinct. Species with wonderful names that stir our imagination – the giant flightless owls of Cuba or the laughing owls of New Zealand; the Japanese wolf; the Samoan wood rail; the pygmy hippopotamus and the legendary dodo. The songs and sounds of these once delightful creatures are now lost to us.

And today across the world, wonderful birds and animals are close to their tipping point. Are they, like the Carolina parakeets, to become for us a receding memory of living things that once were?

National park staff, biologists and NGOs can only do so much in protecting species on our behalf. Countless men and women across the planet dedicate their lives to what they can do that species be protected, often with little resources at their command; often against political indifference and on occasion in direct danger to their own lives. We owe these people a lot. Bless them. But they are far too few in number when stacked up against what is needed if we are to be really effective in conserving biodiversity: a popular word now on many lips.

Professional biologists and others need help. Help from whom? From the rest of us. Unless all of us begin to see and to commit to an ethics code of conduct in our relations to wildlife that will become strong enough in numbers to spill over into the political world we will remain forever tinkering around the edges of what needs to be done if species are to be protected.  Let us be clear here – scientists and dedicated conservationists will, in the end, in spite of their admirable work, not be able to protect species. They need our help. They need the broad and deep roar of many demanding that our societies develop and subscribe to a set of behaviours that will benefit the protection of nature. Without the majority of citizens demanding that certain ethical standards become general in our everyday thinking then we will continue to lose species to extinction.

I have worked for many years both in Canada and in Ireland in conservation education in parks and in nature reserves and have come to the conviction that without a wide-reaching behavioural change in society in its attitude and indeed in its perception of wildlife that conservation of habitat and of species will fail. The primary conservation battleground must now shift its focus onto this area.

I hope others agree – and agree to come together to speak out for a need to force into existence a ‘land ethic’ as first proposed by Rachel Carson many years ago.

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The problem is political, economic and social. At best national parks are drip-feeds to the difficulty.

Until each of us takes a mature and rational position towards nature we will continue to lose species. One by one, if each of us were to change in this way then great conservation progress becomes possible.