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[With relevant column logo]
"SHOOT THE ELEPHANTS, HARPOON THE WHALES," HE ADVISES
Dudgeon, both high and low, flooded the academic world following a proposal - in all seriousness - to kill off Africa's elephants, rhinos and things . The idea is that, because elephants and rhino and hippo are taking up valuable space and eating all our thorntrees and tall grass, the big three should be replaced by Mid-East goats and African corn.
The proposal came from a soil scientist at the University of South Africa ( (Unisa) who pointed out, quite rightly, that this continent's increasing millions of people need to be fed.
"If we cannot curb population growth," the Unisa scientist is quoted as saying, "we shall have to let certain species of wildlife become extinct, and give all our attention to producing food."
The idea of encouraging extinction of our planet's biggest land mammals, and planting more crops in a world over-supplied with subsidised veggies, has caused outrage, not to say rage, around the world. But now support for the plan is at hand. It comes in the form of my friend Frank.
"Kill 'em, in the cause of good governance, goodwill and good sense."
Frank is a practical man, a genius in down-to-earth social engineering, who is hoping to build a waterfront shopping centre over Johannesburg's Zoo Lake, and to win the contract to build a road through the Kruger Park so that the people of the North in South Africa can commute to the people of the East in Mozambique; and vice versa, without being eaten by lions.
Frank rejects the view of conservationists who suggest that more African lives can be saved through eco-tourism than from giving up game parks for new roads or goat-grazing.
"The Nature freaks are greedy. They want to get Germans and Japs to pay to peer at our wild life. At the same time they want Africans to give up breeding babies so that there is more room for the elephants. It's blatant race discrimination. Why should foreign beastly voyeurs observing our game be favoured over locals wishing to enjoying sex?"
Frank leaves me speechless with his devastatingly cold, logical mind, and his eye for a buck (dollar, not antelope).
Nature, he says, has already set the pattern for rendering extinct big mammals such as elephant, rhino, hippo and the rest.
"And who are we to interfere with the process?"
"But Frank, if mankind takes away all the game areas, shoots all the game,, and lets its goats loose on the African thornveld, surely that is interfering?"
"No, my boy. That's living. That's the road to progress."
"Killing elephants and whales and things and burning down forests - that's progress?"
"Of course it is. And saving the elephant - or even the whale - that's interference."
"You're not advocating harpooning all the whales?"
"Of course I am. As you yourself argued in a meritorious article: 'Kill the whale and save the plankton'. You yourself pointed out that plankton is being radiated out of existence because of holes in the sky (to use the technical term). And the whales are gobbling up what is left. Worse than that, all these big mammals are emitting gases which damage the ozone layer and create the 'holes in the sky', as we scientists say.
"Frank, you're a developer, not a scientist, and if elephants emit gas which affects the ozone layer, what do you think masses of cattle, sheep and goats do?
"Their farts aren't so big," said Frank, frankly. "They hardly reach the sky."
All this hot air wasn't getting us anywhere.
"Frank, it's hard to keep up with your arguments. Earlier you said that Nature had set the pattern for rendering large mammals extinct. But isn't it mankind, not Nature, who is threatening all other forms of life?
"Nonsense old chap. Nature was knocking off the biggest mammals before we were born."
Frank pulled from his pocket a tattered old newspaper cutting.
“The fossilised bones of the largest meat-eating dinosaur to roam the Earth - even bigger than the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex - have been found in Argentinia.”
"You see. Giganotosaurus carolinii was bigger even than T. rex - yet he was dead 30 million years before his little brother, and many millions more years before Adam arrived. It proves that big mammals have got to go, to give more grazing space for the rest of us," said Frank.
I read the news cutting which he flourished. The last paragraph reported:
“Despite the enormous dimensions of Giganotosaurus, it is still smaller than the largest known predator that ever lived - an ancient crocodile with an incredible 42-metre-long body.”
"Well" I told Frank, "at least the Big Crocodile [Note for 21st century readers: Pres. P W Botha was known to his Cabinet and Party officials as 'the Big Crocodile] is still alive and well, and living in George. What have you got to say to that?"
"We'll get him to open the new Zoo Lake Shopping Mall and Dino Park," said Frank.
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