Ours to preserve

It is tranquil scenes like this that make African game parks famous. Danger of a natural kind lurks close by, an about eternal feature of the wild.

Danger of another kind is increasing. It is manmade and maybe artificial if we consider ourselves a cut above being just another species participating in a natural community. The human threat to nature arrives from a very different direction than that caused by the hungry predator. It is equally devastating. To the general public this is not so obvious as man has so kindly and thoughtfully created these lovely parks in which this desired part of nature is preserved.

Permanence of the arrangement is reworked by people every few years due to burgeoning human needs. In the parks themselves more cars, better roads and rest camps are forever appearing, reducing nature in the process. This is the least of it.

Human population multiplies on the finite earth at an increasing rate. Each billion is added in fewer years. At present people numbers are increasing from 7 billion to 8 billion in an astonishingly short period but the next billion will arrive faster.

Rural populations are also growing fast wherever possible in Africa, although slower than the urban ones. They need space for their cattle, wood for their fires, bush clearing and water for crops, money from rhino horns or ivory from elephants and jobs from mines innocently aiming at only taking minerals from under the ground in more places, also the parks.

Individually these changes are not deemed prohibitive threats to wildlife. Collectively we’re killing species at an alarming rate, reducing the numbers of most, apart from those that serve as our food. Our grandparents had significantly more wildlife closer to home than we have and our grandchildren are sure to have very much less. Some will only have books and videos, never see a scene like this one in real life.

Is the world growing David Attenboroughs, Greta Thunbergs and Ian Players too slowly to make a difference in the thoughtless and destructive parts of our human lifestyle? Or is the groundswell of committed citizens and those in power heeding the warnings about nature and making sensible adjustments in measures big and small to turn the tide?