Oh no, I thought, as the headlines hit the UK: Polar bear kills young British adventurer in Norway.
The camp on Spitsbergen island were there to investigate the effects of climate change, when they ended up being attacked by the starkest sign of climate change they could possibly find.
I wondered how the general public would react to the news of this tragic incident.
For a long time, conservation organizations have spent a lot of time raising awareness of these animals in order to highlight the possibility of its extinction. Now, the same creature has ‘turned around’ and attacked. Would there be fury, I wondered? Would there be the usual comments that a man’s life is worth more than an animal’s, and that any sympathy for endangered animals and their cause should be spent on preserving the lives of humans instead? (Subjective nonsense that has no place in a world we wish to sustain and conserve…)
I was also worried how the media would go on to portray this. My hope was that the media would not portray polar bears and other desperate endangered animals as savage creatures who are encroaching on our rightful territory and dominion, and which need to be curbed and controlled.
Instead, I hoped that they would depict this news as a shocking reminder of the threat our planet is under, and the biocentric, equal-to-all-creatures view and approach we must take, now that we are self-appointed guardians of our planet.
There has been the usual media sensationalist approach, in the usual places. But thankfully, the vast majority of people have seen that we are intruders into a natural habitat where very little other humans live. I’m glad to hear this.
I believe the ‘RIP Svalbard Bear’ Facebook page, now taken down, has made conservationists look silly yet again. Perhaps a Facebook group demanding ‘Why were they allowed on the island in the first place?’ page would invite a more appropriate discussion, and would have been allowed to stay on the social media site. Instead, the media and anthropocentric commentors have launched this backlash, claiming the page has caused ‘outrage’ by insinuating that bears are more important than humans. I don’t believe this was the real reason behind the page’s creation. I do believe there should be healthy discussion of the safety of camping with polar bears and other wild animals, without any insinuation that one species is more important than another.
In my opinion? I simply disagree with the organization’s decision not to have an armed night guard or night flares, and to rely solely in the technology of some electric fence. As a result of this, we have lost both a young man and an animal on the brink of extinction as it is. I can only hope it creates more respect for the predators of the natural world, and not the ‘outrage’ that the media is determined to create in its daily readers.
