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Just a quick post and the title is slightly misleading but represents my deep thoughts right now. At dawn this morning I watched a herd of wild elephants make their way. This came on the back of a long fascinating discussion last night with a couple of people who spend a big chunk of their lives reintroducing marine species like orcas and dolphins into the wild (I'll blog about Jeff and Katy soon). A big part of our talk centered on the out of balance emphasis some species get, for reasons that simply come down to money but are making true conservation more and more difficult.
I've mentioned many times how the leopard is discriminated against within that context. As someone hell bent and devoting his life to the species, and reintroduction programs are a big part of that, I lament the lack of support the spotted cat gets compared to its striped relative, in fact compared to icon species in general. So much of this comes down to a lack of understanding including the ridiculous notion that just because a species has a healthy population in parts of its range it is not in trouble. For the leopard, which is seriously marginalized, particularly because it is not a tourism money spinner, its persecution has seen it wiped out in many parts of its range.
So how does that play into ecosystems? That is the message that is not being received and is one we have to deliver before it is too late. Reintroduction of species, the leopard included, is future proofing, it is rebuilding. It's about time more people looked beyond the stripes, personal agendas and organization agendas, and started putting emphasis on what is right rather than what is cute and what makes money.
Yes, we need the tiger, very much so... but we need the leopard too...
