A love letter to strange creatures

Did you love dinosaurs as a child? Personally, I remember going through an intense phase of obsession with the prehistoric world as a young kid.

As a five-year-old, I hoped to discover some species of ancient beast—a home-grown austrosaurus, or a rhoetosaurus perhaps—that had somehow survived, undiscovered, in the undergrowth of Perth’s foothills for 65 million years. 

When–alas–no such discovery materialised, I was able to find some solace in the consoling words of one of my older sisters, who pointed out that dragonflies, centipedes and millipedes had been around for hundreds of millions of years. My imagination instantly lit up: to think that there were so many ancient creatures in our garden who were the direct descendants of animals that had shared the world with the dinosaurs! 

Like numerous other kids, the dinosaurs were also my first introduction to the concept of extinction; the unimaginably sad idea of every single one of a species being gone forever.

The pain we feel at the prospect of the irreversible vanishing of a whole category of living things is connected to our deepest sense of the intrinsic worth of life. It is something that children know instinctively: that the ‘value’ of an animal species is manifest in the awe and wonder that we feel at life forms so different to us, sharing our existence on earth. These are the feelings evoked in us by the flight of an owl; the gossamer tracery of a fern; the intricacy of a coral; the improbable deep-sea existence of the ghost octopus.

In my experience as an uncle and then a parent, kids also intuitively grasp the unfairness of extinction. The impact that killed off the dinosaurs was nobody’s fault, but we human beings have choices about our conduct towards other species. It isn’t fair for humanity to wipe out another species, just because we can.

There is something deeply moving, too, about our capacity to experience love for the mysterious, unseeable and unknown. Although we are unlikely to ever encounter a single living specimen, we nonetheless wish that species will thrive because their very existence is extraordinary and miraculous in and of itself.

I have been thinking about all of this over the last few weeks, in the context of a creature that I have never seen in real life, the endangered Maugean skate (zearaja maugeana).

Like dragonflies, Maugean skates date back to the period of the dinosaurs. They snuffle around the bottom of Macquarie Harbour, eating crabs, perfectly adapted to the brackish water between the Gordon and King River catchment areas and the ocean. As I have studied pictures of the animals, I have been struck by the delicacy of their patterning, and wondered about what those raised, delicate, quizzical eyes may have witnessed over millennia. 

Maybe you’ve been looking at the Maugean skate recently too, because the fish has been featuring prominently in the national media ever since the Prime Minister announced plans to amend our national environmental laws to favour salmon farming—the number one threat to the survival of the Maugean skate. 

Politicians are used to calibrating and trading; doing the electoral deals that will see them through to the next poll, or some other objective. But nature isn’t like that. You can’t ‘message’ your way out of extinction. Nor can you ‘policy’ your way into making it acceptable to destroy or transgress things that are sacred: the irreducible worth and dignity of all human beings, the inherent preciousness of every species.

Meanwhile, the prime minister has now called the federal election. Greenpeace is resolutely non-partisan–we don’t back any candidate or political party. But we can, and do, endorse policies and ideals, consistent with our mission to secure an earth capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity. 

The candidates whom I want to see elected are those who accept that it should be a non-negotiable obligation of public office to recognise the intrinsic worth of each person, and every species. I imagine you may well share this vision. And whoever is elected, the work of Greenpeace goes on; to hold the powerful accountable to the non-negotiable ideal of securing an earth capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity. 

Out of the headlines now, the prognosis for the Maugean skate isn’t good, but neither is the species extinct yet. For so long as a population of the creatures remains, there is still faint hope for resurgence, however unlikely. But you never quite know. Life doesn’t give up. Life fights for life.

And onward we go, together.