Poetry -Back Home for tea

Posted on by Opher

Back Home for tea

Machinegun an elephant and rhino, or two,

On the African plain.

Then into the jungle

To pot a gorilla, chimp and whatever might remain.

Flit to Vietnam

To saw down a mighty tree,

Harpoon a Blue Whale

In the Sargasso Sea –

And back home for tea.

Opher 13.9.2016

Back Home for Tea

The world is now so small we can whizz round in our Leah Jets in no time at all. The logging companies have opened up the jungle to chop down the tallest trees and the hunters pour in through the new roads.

They machine gun rhino and elephant from trucks and light planes.

They take the tusks to carve and the horn to grind down as a cure for impotence (just what we need).

They chop the forest, murder our cousins – chimps, gorillas and orangutans, for bush-meat and still harpoon whales.

The great American hunters buy trophies. With a bunch of natives in tow they track lion, elephant and rhino and shoot with high-calibre rifle from a safe distance. They pay big money to kill off the last of the great beasts.

The palaeontologists say that the first sign of humans appearing on the scene is the total disappearance of all megafauna. We are the most cruel, brutal killers. We have the whole planet in our sights.

Anthropocene Apocalypse – Cecil the lion and trophy hunting.

Posted on by Opher

Anthropocene Apocalypse cover

Back in 1900, when Theodore Roosevelt was out hunting bears, things were different.

Back in 1902 the human world population was 1.7 billion. Nature was secure. The Jungles and rainforests were intact. The effects of hunting (apart from if you were a Dodo, Passenger pigeon or Bison) were not going to drastically affect animal populations.

Guns were quite rudimentary. You had to get close.

Now we have high-power, accurate guns. You can kill from distance.

We have a population of 7.3 billion. The forests are being decimated. All around the world – the Amazon, Vietnam, Madagascar. Some of the major rainforests are now 10% of what they were in 1900. The hunters, with their high-power weapons, go in to the remaining jungles via the logging roads, and shoot anything that moves. Trucks are heaped with dead chimps, monkeys and anything else you can think of.

I have a head full of questions.

By 2100 the world population could be 16 billion. Will there be a single wild animal left? Will there be a single square mile of rainforest?

What world are we creating?

What should we do with the politicians that are selling the forests for a quick buck?

What should happen to the logging companies who are clearing pristine rainforest to make a killing?

What should happen to the authorities who sell licences to the sad hunters, like Walter Palmer, who murder animals for trophies?

What should happen to the hunters who are decimating wild-life to feed their families?

What can be done to protect our dwindling wild-life and conserve our wildernesses?