I read a news item today that upset me very much. Brazilian authorities have reported that the fabled Amazon river dolphin or 'pink dolphin' (owing to its distinctive pinkish hue) is being hunted and slaughtered in such huge numbers, that it runs the risk of being wiped out. As it is, for now it's the last of the remaining river dolphin species in the world.
I remember seeing a beautifully made film back in 1987 called "Where the River Runs Deep" in which the pink river dolphin of the Amazon plays a pivotal and mystical role in the film's narrative. I remember so well being awed and really moved by the unique beauty of this dolphin in that film. It somehow fed into my vivid imagination all the primordial allure and vast, vast lushness of the Amazon, a place, almost another world, of magical and wonderful creatures like pink dolphins.
And now this.
The reports state that these beautiful dolphins are being washed up on the shores of the Amazon River and its tributaries in record numbers and that, if this continues, the dolphin species will be wiped out. The dolphins have been clearly cut up, gutted and otherwize eviscerated. A great and natural way to die, of course.
And the culprits? Fishermen along the river are almost certainly the culprits, according to authorities. Since they're mostly likely to be Roman Catholics, it is my fervent wish that there is indeed a hell for them where they rot and get eaten away every single day for eternity by a swarm of the most voracious piranhas. The ignorant bastards.
Why kill these beautiful, unique animals? It's at times like these that my despair and disgust at the human (mis)condition and its treatment of animals knows no bounds.
The pink dolphins are known to be very gentle and extremely curious animals, coming up close to boats and the river shore, inquisitive at humans and their activities. The stupid things. No wonder they get slaughtered with such impunity. 'Gentle' and 'curious' just doesn't cut it on a planet savaged and ravaged by
homo sapiens. Don't they know this by now, the silly pink things, swimming so blithely in the murky waters of the Amazon? Clearly not.
I also blame Brazil for this. Some undoubtedly great work continues to done by tireless Brazilian environmentalists and conservation specialists in their vast country. But I am getting very weary of the argument by successive Brazilian governments that its territory is so 'vast' that it cannot protect all its natural environment and the habitats therein. For example, this is a nation that sees fit to have a total of just
five agents who are tasked with protecting wildlife
in an area of the Amazon jungle twice the size of Texas. That's hardly a convincing commitment to the protection of species like the pink dolphin from a nation that has now (I believe) the world's eighth-largest economy.
But, of course, the pink dolphins must play fifty-third fiddle (never mind 'second fiddle') to the needs of the millions of desperately poor Brazilians in one of the countries with the hugest gulfs between the rich and the poor in the world.
Yes, of course that makes sense. Always the needs of humans come first. As it should be, correct?
Yet, as humans keep coming first (and second and third and fourth and fifth and...), and other species keep coming a literal last to our whims and neverending 'crises of the day', one must wonder: why is it then that the state of this planet just keeps getting worse and worse? Perhaps the equation needs to be re-looked at, no?
The slaughter of the pink dolphin is not just a blight on the biodiversity of the Amazon or a blight on Brazil for that matter. It is a blight on all of us. A reminder - yet again and for the umpteenth time - that by consistently placing ourselves so imperiously over other species with whom we share this planet, we are losing the battle not only for the very survival of this planet. but the battle for our very selves.
Do you get the point?
