To celebrate International Women’s Day 2011, today we’re looking back at last December’s TEDxAmsterdamWomenwith a series of articles and videos.
The conservationist and documentary filmmaker couple talked about our society’s mixed approach and misconception regarding wildlife in general and wild cats in specific. Admiring them and fear them at the same time – and not doing enough to understand and preserve them, in general.
Show-casing some of their National Geographic explorer’s footage that appropriately varied between a shocking video of an elephant attacked by numerous leopords and managing to shake off the attack (against all odds), followed by a moving video of a baboon cub picked up to safety and nurtured by a female Leoperd – they help us realize what they already know – nature is not a clear cut hierarchy but a complex system – a predator can be an emerging mother.
The big cats should be preserved – their numbers had dropped significantly from 45000 to 20000 surviving cats (10000 legally shot by safari caretakers).
And what were they killed for? There used to be the time leopard skin was the only African garment – but this is not the case. The correct answer is – memorabilia and bone merchandise industry are the main extinction reason. Our own vice.
What is the price of a lion-head stuck on a wall? when a male lion is killed it destroyed the tribe – the new lion will kill all the cubs in the process of leadership claiming. Every mature lion equals 20-30 deathes. And once the lions and big cats will disappear from Africa – the entire eco-system will disappear.
By alienating ourselves from the big cats we loose the dignity of our existence in the planet, the self-respect as a community that is a part of the biological clan.
The baby baboon eventually died – by the way. But the protective leopard is a proud mother of a cub of her own – And thus the cycle of life continues. For now.
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