Is webcam wilderness still wild? (or is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose?)

By John Roberts
11 December 2009 01:20:00

Many years ago, in a land far, far away I was once, believe it or not, an English child and I still have vague memories of Sunday T.V. watching (in Black and White but more by license choice than necessity - I'm not that old), Rugby Special or Ski Sunday and then usually a programme with Dr David Attenborough somewhere exotic reporting on the natural order of things - the slow and the sleepy, eaten by the quick and the ferocious, the big and the close knit surviving through knowledge and memory - things lived and things died, it was (and is) tough out there: a dead young deer was the meal for the predator's cubs, a matriarch elephant, with a long life under her belt, died and made way for others, after a period where the herd hung around, the scavengers moved in and squabbled over the carcass.

    Red in tooth and claw as Lord Tennyson would have it, though, admittedly, in these Sunday night struggles, after the proscribed level of struggle the rains always came and life was once more renewed - but wasn't that the point of it all? (that this may no longer be happening is a tale for another time).

    This, and a trip to the zoo to see the slightly fatter, less naturally aware and intense versions of the animals was probably the closest average English folks got to wilderness and we lapped it up - when younger we wondered why the cameraman never stepped in to save the cute little deer, but we grew out of it when we learned that this is the way of things and to interfere on a gut reaction to solve the emotional problem in front of us, as history has told us time and time again, just pushes the negative consequence elsewhere - in the basest view, the predator's cubs die, the scavengers - part of the ecosystem - don't have enough to eat.

    Chaos theory will tell you every action has unseen consequences, I don't know why she swallowed the fly. 

    Then slowly, the world got smaller, normal folks like you and I could find ways to go and see these things for real, Dr. Attenborough had to turn to expensive time lapse photography and widgetty cameras to stay ahead of the game and continue to amaze us while those that followed in his footsteps resorted to tabloid wildlife journalism with titles not out of place in a primary school yard argument, "WORLD'S DEADLIEST ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS", "Who Would Win in a Fight Between...."  and, worse still in my book, if you weren't actually handling the creature you'd come to see or disturbing it in some way, then it just wasn't a bankable programme.

    The great wide open spaces, the endless jungles in which these dramas were once played out disappeared or, at best, shrank; human populations increased and cheap flights allowed normal folks like us to go and watch the drama for themselves - being humans we started to interfere, be it for our own progress (territories were split by roads, dams were built for power and irrigation) or for tourists (when droughts came naturally Park management pumped water to 'save the animals' largely at the request of their guests (but with half an eye on their budget); in a case recently a critically endangered Siamese crocodile was moved from a camp ground here in Thailand because it was scaring guests - not one word of dissent) somewhere along the way some folks changed the focus of the idea of National Parks - from preserved wilderness ecosystems in all their sweating, flying, biting, stinking, glorious ugliness flecked with seconds of beauty and views of the sublime to playgrounds to come and 'see what we saw on TV' (TV never expressly told you that their programmes were the result of years of mosquito bitten camouflaged camera work), naturally the focus falls on the charismatic megafauna and not on the mosquitoes, worms, ticks and leeches, in fact, say the visitors, if you can give us the charisma without the irritation we'd be a whole lot happier.

    So the temptation arrives to manage the wilderness, if people come to see elephants, we'll manage the area to show them elephants even if it is to the detriment - particularly with elephants - of pretty much all else in the eco-system, especially when you start to help them out, pumping in water in times of drought, growing fruit trees in the jungle - mostly done in Thailand in attempts to stop them coming crop raiding but also done in other countries in response to visitors' cries of 'how can you let them suffer' during the hard times.  

    Is suffering to be regretted?  I guess it must be, but it is also part of the natural order.

    Pumping water during a drought and negating the effects of other natural disasters that would regulate a population means they then fail to do so, in building a dam and knocking out the dry season delayed pregnancies are no longer delayed and the populations increase.  

    Errrrm... hooray!?  

    Well, yes, if you happen to be an elephant or a person who has come all this way to see elephants, and well, no if you happen to be a herbivore now in competition with the big guzzling things, or an ant that feeds on a particular sort of tree that is now driven to destruction by the increased ele population.  An overpopulation of the charismatic mega fauna begins to develop inside the protected areas to match the overpopulation of humans outside....

    ...and then come the webcams, people love our animals and our park, let's pop a webcam so our fans can see what goes on in our wilderness environment - but the honest piece of naivety we show when we invite the globe into our homes via their desktop is that nowadays everyone is conservationally aware and educated and, well, it seems, everyone ain't.

    Apparently outrage was caused the other week when a park management somewhere in Africa failed to interfere with nature for the sake of just one beast, spotted in assumed pain on a webcam - though those that caused the outrage got their diagnosis wrong, the animal was not in pain through giving birth in her old age but through constipation bought about by not being able to properly chew food, eventually the animal died having successfully deposited her juvenile calf with the herd.

    Somewhere the line has been smudged between domestic animals, who we, having caused them to be born domesticated have duty to make as comfortable as possible (within the bounds of their species) and wild ecosystems which should be protected as a whole not just for the benefit of one species, let alone one beast.

    There are a great many advantages in being born free but the drawback is that you are part of an immense and complicated system that is not skewed in your favour - to me that the phrase "Elephant Dies of Old Age" makes a headline says it all.
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Elephant dies of old age (South Africa) News 24
October 5, 2009

Cape Town - The elephant cow that provoked an outcry from an animal rights group when it was spotted, apparently distressed and in pain, on an Mpumalanga game reserve's live webcam a fortnight ago, has died.

"The elephant cow died yesterday [Sunday] afternoon of natural causes, i.e. old age," Djuma Private Game Reserve owner Jurie Moolman told Sapa in an e-mail on Monday.

The cow, which last week managed to rejoin its herd, had been at the end of its natural life, with her last set of teeth worn to the point of not being able to chew her food.

Looking out for her calf

"She kept up with the herd, and it is difficult not to think that she had one last thing to do before she died - ensuring that her calf was accepted into the herd. Her calf is with the herd and seems to be doing well.

"Hopefully this is a lesson to us all about interfering; we should not, unless humans caused the suffering," Moolman said.

Djuma is one of more than a dozen lodges and reserves that make up the 65 000 hectare Sabi Sand Reserve, which shares an unfenced 50km border with the Kruger National Park.

On Monday last week, the group Animal Rights Africa demanded that the reserve's owners help the elephant.

According to the group, the elephant was suffering with what appeared to be birth complications.

The Sabi Sand Reserve has a "policy of non-intervention when it comes to animals in distress not caused by humans", but its ecological committee decided to take action in this case.

Could not chew food

When the animal was found by rangers, it was seen to be suffering from old age and constipation.

"It was determined that she is very old - so old that her teeth are too worn for her to masticate her food properly, and thus a bolus of unchewed food is blocking her alimentary canal," Moolman said at the time.

At one point there were plans to euthanise the elephant, but it was granted a reprieve when it rejoined its herd. It was closely monitored over the past week.

The cow - which has a three-year-old calf - was estimated to be between 50 and 60 years of age, an advanced age for an elephant.

Moolman reported the calf was no longer suckling and should have no problems surviving without its mother.
African elephants, the world's largest land mammals, die more often of starvation than old age.

They go through five sets of teeth in their lives, but once these are gone - worn away by the up to 250kg of bark, leaves and twigs an adult elephant chews its way through in a day - they are no longer able to eat.

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