Ages ago I went to a business lunch. Not actually a lunch where I did some actual business, but a lunch for businesspeople. In no way could I ever be mistaken for a businessperson. I hate wearing a tie, for starters. No, I was there in support of a colleague who was being honoured for his business acumen.
The keynote speaker at the business lunch was a very senior National Party politician. A Minister of Finance, in fact. He made a speech, as politicians are wont to do. He talked about New Zealand, the country I live in. But given that he was in a friendly room, full of fellow businesspeople, of a Nationalistic persuasion, he jovially reduced everything to numbers, in the way businesspeople are wont to do. People on benefits became numbers. Those struggling on or about the poverty line became numbers. The obligation of the government to provide housing for some of those people was couched in terms of being a landlord, with tenants you’d rather not have because they threaten your bottom line - or something businessey like that. Everyone else laughed and smiled and nodded.
Meanwhile, in my little corner over there on the left-hand-side of the room, I wept quietly at how quickly all traces of humanity exit the building when you reduce everything to numbers.
Fast forward to now, and there’s a phrase I learnt, just the other day. TSL. It means Too Stupid to Live. As in the character in the slasher film who checks out the spooky, dark basement after all the other characters have said “whatever you do, don’t go down into the spooky, dark basement.” Or the character who climbs onto the roof during a thunderstorm, just to get a better view of the lightning.
TSL.
A wee while ago Tama Potaka, the National Party Conservation Minister in the Coalition of Numpties, said some stuff to the Parliamentary Environment Committee. He was very upfront in pointing out that:
“There is a cost with maintaining species and ensuring that they don't become extinct. And I don't think anyone in the history of the Department of Conservation has costed that in a [meaningful], defensible and credible way…”
Fair enough. But Tama was up for giving that very thing a crack:
"I wouldn't want to imagine the cost, but that is literally hundreds of billions, maybe trillions of dollars…”
The upshot of this not imagining being:
"So we have to be very careful before we say every single species is going to be saved."
And then an honest admission, which is a rarity in politics:
“It's one that we may not be able to deliver on…”
In other words, a whole bunch of you endangered fellas out there, tough luck when it comes to extinction.
So, having had the cruel reality of conservation in a National Party style laid out before us, maybe it is time for someone to help them as they start the job of costing which species have wandered into the TSL – or maybe the Too Expensive to Live – zone.
Luckily they have me for that very job.
Those annoying Hector’s dolphins are definitely at even more risk now than they were before, for having the temerity to exist where the go-fast toy boats wanted to have their races. Surely annoying a Kiwi sporting hero and denying New Zealand future economic opportunities for more boy-toy races are strikes two and three for Hector. It’s sad I know, but when you can only fiscally save a sensible number of species, the dolphins may very well be for the chop – possibly literally if they get run down by one of the go-fast toy boats.
The dotterel has long been the poster child for a species that is TSL and under this government’s pay-for-your-continued-existence-or-go-extinct model I fear it will fall well short of the economic threshold to survive. This is because this government loves roads and if ever there was a bird stupid enough to build a nesting site where the government wants to put a road, it will inevitably be the dotterel. To achieve their goals of more roads so we can go nowhere faster, they simply cannot take the risk. Infrastructure 1 Dotterel 0 (probably literally).
The Robust Grasshopper (Brachaspis robustus) clearly doesn’t live up to its name so should probably get the evolutionary chop on the grounds of false advertising. Mind you, when it comes to dodgy advertising, it’s not like the National Party is without sin.
The Canterbury knobbled weevil (Hadramphus tuberculatus), despite: (a) having an awesome name; and (b) looking like it would not look out of place in the National party caucus, is probably not going to make anyone’s Must Save List on the grounds that, quite frankly, saving a weevil is not something that will sing when it comes to the press release. “Yes, we lost thousands upon thousands of jobs along the way, but when it comes to saving the Canterbury knobbled weevil this government is really doing the business.” No, if ever an animal needed some great PR spin, right now, it is Hadramphus tuberculatus.
The tuatara, our own living dinosaur, is a species we should definitely fork out the bucks and save. A bit like how, every few years, MMP saves Winston Peters.
Then we get to the 2-time New Zealand Bird of the Year champion, the kakapo. Yes, it is an adorable bird. And yes, the whole world found it to be an adorable bird after the Stephen Fry thing. But seriously, if ever there was a bird that is TSL, then surely the kakapo is not far behind the dodo in the queue.
Skipping over the whole “flightless parrot” starting point, there’s very little to suggest that the kakapo is anything but a lost cause. It wanders around the bush for years before deciding that there’s enough rimu fruit around to maybe have a shag and possibly help out when it comes to prolonging the species. Then, should there be some actual successful mating, the male goes bush again and leaves the missus to raise the kids. Not a great role model, the male kakapo. Their method of defence (staying very still) may have worked when it came to outlasting the now-extinct Haast’s eagle and large Eyles harrier, but turned out to be fuck all use when it came to the little bastard rodents we humans brought here. True, that’s on us, but seriously, does the concept of evolving to survive not apply to the kakapo?
There are even those who have body-shamed the kakapo, calling it too fat to live. Yet this is the reason why I think, if the National government have half-a-brain between them (which is still a matter of conjecture) that saving the kakapo should be the #1 priority on any list they have called: Species We Actually Do Give a Shit About Saving.
Because seriously, look at the kakapo. Look at the meat on that bird.
Think it through. We not only save the kakapo, but we then start farming them commercially. They can be free-range kakapo if that is what the market responds to. Until there are millions of the fuckers. Then, at Xmas, instead of eating bland, steroid-based turkey, we get to eat our national bird. How patriotic – and potentially profitable – is that?
And then, in the National way, we use the revenue gained from the kakapo industry to pick another commercially viable animal species to save from extinction. Archey’s frog’s legs for your entrée anyone?
So now who’s TSL, eh?