Anybody watch Speed of Life on Discovery? WOW. Simply amazing content and photography. They applied the high speed video technique to various animal interactions in order to achieve that super slow motion "bullet time" Matrix / great white sharks breaching effect.
There was only one small factual error in the show. They were showing close ups of a couple Pachypodiums but they called them Acacias. Oops. It's like calling a horned lizard a porcupine because they both have spines. When I pointed that out to my friends they were like...you should tell them! So I did.
Today when I e-mailed Discovery, after pointing out the error and sharing how much I loved the episodes...I threw in a quick pitch for a show. The show would be like Man vs Wild meets Medicine Man (the movie). A team of plant/animal experts would fly around the world and rescue as many plants/animals as they could from areas that were about to be developed. How awesome would that be? Like Man vs Wild...it would be entertaining and educational...but it would also be making a positive impact. Instead of eating the animals...the team of experts would rescue them. Not sure about the name...maybe Man saves Wild?
Even just documenting the various plants/animals in an area about to be developed would be valuable. Would local governments offer resistance or assistance? How would the team decide which species and how many of each to include in their "Noah's Ark"? How many species would they be able to rescue? What would happen to species that were rescued?
The AOS has quite a few articles on conservation. Three specific articles came to mind in terms of rescuing orchids...
- Salvaging Orchids in Mexico - Weyman Bussey - Jan 1989
- Some Interesting Miniatures Saved from Destruction in Mexico - Weyman Bussey - June 1983
- The Salvation Army - Downs Matthews - April 1999
While I do encourage everybody to
boycott the AOS...I
digitized the first two articles and shared them with the AOS webmaster so that hopefully he'll add them to the AOS website. The third article should already be in digital form so it would be great if he could add that one as well.
Imagine if the Discovery folks being able to read those articles was the difference between them giving the show a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Each and every one of the AOS articles has the ability to positively impact our hobby to some unknown degree...aka...the
Butterfly Effect. It's completely irrational that anybody would want to diminish the positive impact of the articles by needlessly restricting their access.
In the article...Salvaging Orchids in Mexico...Bussey described how 35,000 to 55,000 acres of forest were about to be flooded for a giant dam project. The Mexican government first authorized a group of researchers to collect in the area. Afterwards the government allowed residents of Mexico to collect in the area. If that were to happen today...how much money could a government make by charging collectors for permission to collect in an area that was scheduled to be developed? How much would you pay for the opportunity to collect and save orchids at the same time? Of course, some government oversight would be required to ensure that collectors only collected in the specified area. The military would be perfect for patrolling the perimeter. There would probably also have to be on site shipping in order for the government to seal the boxes and label them as salvaged plants.
The AOS has dozens of articles on conservation that are full of great ideas, success stories and critiques of ineffective policies. If all those articles had been freely available on the internet 10 years ago...how many orchids and other plants/animals would have been saved as a result? How many species are lost each year that the AOS needlessly delays sharing those articles on the internet?
It would seem straightforward that if the goals of an organization are education, research and conservation that it would be reasonable for somebody to express disapproval when the leaders of the organization make decisions that are undeniably harmful to the goals of the organization.
So what does it mean that so many of you are perfectly happy with the AOS? Does it mean that you don't realize how many AOS articles are on conservation? Does it mean that you don't care about conservation? Does it mean that you don't believe that making those articles freely available on the internet will have a positive impact on conservation? Does it mean that you think that sharing articles on the internet is too expensive?
For those of you that aren't aware...CITES only restricts the movement of plants/animals between countries...it does absolutely nothing in terms of saving species from areas about to be developed. It would be really great if Discovery recognized the value of my idea...but in any case there should really be an international agency dedicated to helping countries rescue species from areas about to be developed.
Man saves Wild
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