Sanctuary Movements, part 5

Sanctuary Needed: Animals under Threat

In England, farmers and ecologists have adopted joint measures, for example, to help birds survive one of the most devastating winters in recent years throughout the U.K., namely, an initiative by farmers to leave up to 4% of their croplands fallow in the same spirit as the above referenced backyard nursery concept. Moreover, the British government has provided a “Farmland Bird Package” to compensate farmers who engage in this Campaign for the Farmed Environment.¹¹ Indeed, Pied Wagtails (Motacilla alba) have been seen venturing close to homes where they are “most likely to find insects due to the warmth”.¹²

Such examples should provide the beginnings of a blueprint for the nearly seven billion Homo sapiens, the majority of whom now live in cities, but must view themselves as in critical partnership with the billions of other people living in rural or wilderness areas, not to mention the more than 100 million other species multiplied by the millions of individuals per many of those species who all share and cohabit this sacred Earth with us.

Of course, a blueprint is a huge noun that leaves most to the imagination and cannot begin to redress the countless loopholes that all but savage the old adage, “Think Globally, Act Locally”; an exquisite injunction that presupposes that peoples’ thought can make a difference; that our actions are in fellowship. But if neither our thoughts nor our actions can be predicted, or relied upon to re-engineer gaping imbalances in the alleged natural order of things, then what? Even something as seemingly cut and dry as the banning of handguns in the city of Chicago, a notion predicated on the belief that handguns are inherently about violence and therefore do not fall under the normal guarantees of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, unleashed an avalanche of Supreme Court debates.¹³

In New Zealand the Little Spotted Kiwi, whose fate was discussed in Chapter One, was recently translocated closer to Auckland than ever. Transfers of the birds from Kapiti Island to Motuihe, in the Hauraki Gulf, an island open to the public, represents a major conservation achievement. The goal of the Motuihe Trust, according to its Chairman John Laurence, in collaboration with the Department of Conservation, is to relocate up to 40 of the Little Spotted Kiwis to the island.¹⁴

While more than 17,000 known species are globally in dire straits¹⁵ according to the 2010 Red List promulgated by the IUCN in Switzerland, and based upon a survey of 47,677 species of both plants and animals, hope emerges with an insistent message. Yes, “more than one in five of all known mammals, over a quarter of reptiles and 70 percent of plants are under threat.”¹⁶

Part 4: Scarce Habitat Areas: Ecological Danger
Part 6: Tigers: Wildlife Threatened

11. See Country Life, January 20, 2010, p.33. Indeed, Pied Wagtails (Motacilla alba) have been seen venturing close to homes where they are “most likely to find insects due to the warmth”.
12. ibid, “Keeping cheerful through the freeze,” by MH, p.36.
13. See “Supreme Court Weighs Chicago’s Strict Gun Ban,” by Ariane de Vogue, March 2, 2010, ABC NEWS/Politics,
14. See “Kiwi become Aucklanders,” n.a., ., in Forest & Bird, Number 332, May 2009, p.7.
15. See “Over 17,000 species threatened by extinction,” by Frank Jordans, AP writer, Yahoo! News, , November 3, 2010.
16. ibid.