Baby Creative's Blog

Climate change is, no matter how you look at it, a bit of a problem.  Now put yourself in the shoes of a panda. As Chris Packham recently brought to light, the species really is on its last legs.

However, Packham’s call to let the animal die out with ‘dignity’ has raised the hackles of environmentalists all around the world. The panda has become the ‘poster boy’ of numerous green organisations and, at the end of the day, it really is quite cute. Just letting it die out seems wrong. It may be true that the panda has to spend around 18 hours a day eating bamboo due to a poor digestion system, and that it lacks any kind of libido, and we don’t dispute that this makes it a poor candidate for survival. It is nevertheless one of the planet’s most loved animals.

This got us thinking. It’s far too late to save every animal on the planet. In fact, it’s possibly too late to save the vast majority of them. So, in true Baby Creative style, we propose a democratic solution to the problem of which ones to concentrate on. You see, we’re worried that biologists like Packham (who probably live in a lab and sleep in a test tube) will make the decisions for us, and we would rather at least save our favourites.

We propose that people should be able to vote for the species they want saving, and conservation funds and resources should be directed accordingly. It would be like a modern-day Noah’s ark, and there would only be room for those species that prove popular enough. We may be accused of ‘playing God’, but better to do this democratically than dictatorially. Of course to make sure this is a truly international, non-Eurocentric event, we couldn’t just rely on the internet. We’d want researchers on the ground in every country of every continent. This may be difficult, but would be a worthwhile price to pay for the conversation of the right species.

This may mean the demise of a few types of fly, a couple of rare toads and maybe a strange breed of sheep. There might be some plants in the Amazon capable of curing cancer that go under, but that’s just tough. However, it would probably mean that the elephant, tiger and panda are guaranteed a fighting chance. What’s more, it would double as a form of education; people would become aware of exactly what species are endangered. They might even get involved. We know all this may sound a little harsh, but Noah wouldn’t have needed to build the ark if the world wasn’t flooding…