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HOPE A LYRE AND THE GLOSSY BLACK COCKATOO
It`s all about the numbers. Death, destruction, wasteland, heat, fireballs, environmental catastrophes, it`s all about the numbers. The bushfires in Australia 2019/20 caused the estimated demise of a billion animals, affected 10 million hectares of land, created 300 + million tonnes of carbon dioxide spew, destroyed over 2000 homes and well, you know, it`s all a bit so what…….these numbers become peculiarly numbing soundbites, they tumble and echo around your skull. I can`t cope. I can`t cope with it, I can`t cope with numbers like that. Kangaroo Island Australia`s equivalent to the Galápagos, a haven for rare and specialized species, lost half of its habitat to this `natural` scorched earth event, 200,000 hectares, the size of the Lake District …….even when you compare the numbers with something closer to home they still numb and boggle. Numbers they can be counter productive, inure you from the true emotional loss of nature and habitat destruction, they are too deep to fathom, too much to mind bend, it`s too hard to skew your synapses…… Imagine half the Cairngorms was erased…….do you know what..I can`t.
So as usual when I see some environmental catastrophe, and particularly when I see the numbers, I batten down the emotional hatches, there is a need to deaden my senses as there is an overwhelming sense of desperation and exasperation, here we go again, the next ecological nail in the earth`s coffin. In the bushfire case the cruise ships still cruise the Australian coastline , the Australian coal industry still digs and smokes, the sheep are still getting farmed and the earth burns and the hotter we all get. I need to hunker down deeper in my emotional duvet, hibernate and incarcerate myself in a selfish soundless sightless cocoon, it seems the only way…bye world…bye bye indeed. It`s difficult not to drown in thoughts of petrogeddon, suffocate in the hysterical reality of covidity, rot in my own putrid corrupted thoughts…. yet out of this existential cesspit, this gooey fowl mudbath of polluted environmental malaise I perceive a glimmer, a thin shaft of light, a beacon in the charred remains in the form of a rather wonderful bird the Glossy Black Cockatoo. The story of this bird oxygenates me with hope, releases me from my hypoxic state, dissociating me from the unemotive numbers. The Glossy Black cockatoo story displays a symbiotic balance between human heroes and nature, a win win where humans are infused with hope, a peculiar and particular human foible and nature, life and existence.
But there is hope and hope and hope has its caveats. George Frederic Watts, the artist, knew a thing or two about hope, Watts was a dreamer with a belief in humanity and a belief in emotional aspiration, his refusal of a baronetcy twice shows the mark of a man who understood that hope is not about material gain and adulation. But he also knew there needed to be a solid basis to hope from which dreams and desires could productively emerge and that hope is not expectant, it disowns expectancy. Watts symbolized Hope in his 1886 painting, a blindfolded woman sits on a globe playing a single string lyre. Contemporary critics dissed the painting for its negative connotations of despair but Watts realized that Hope should not be sentimental and that hope can come from the music played from just a solitary string. The symbol of hope the anchor is another manifestation of the reality within hope, along with a vision hope needs a firm basis. Hoping for the best, a form of boundless hope, is actually hopeless and irresponsible, hope only has energy and purpose if it is bound and a plan emerges.
Ah the cockatoo, a vision and a plan. The Glossy Black Cockatoo in the 1990`s was in serious danger of extinction, the Kangaroo Island sub-species was down to 150 birds existing in a few flocks, it`s predominant habitat was under continuous threat and it`s life history was not conducive to a a quick fix anytime soon. I know the numbers again, but one can get your head around 150. Through a thoughtfully conceived rescue programme, funded by the Island community and WWF Australia, the population by 2016 had grown to a much healthier 400 in seven flocks. So the loss amongst the latest fires of 35% of known cockatoo nests and over 50% of nesting and feeding habitat was felt particularly hard, any conservation gains had been lost in a week, this amongst a background of embered homesteads, loss of community income and the sights of the grizzly remains of marsupials in various forms of deaths grotesque skeletal agonies. This was not a good rescue plan outcome especially in a community which had been battered emotionally from pillar to burning post and just like our scorched planet, locally there was a need for a vision for hope to potentially cut through all the statistics. So during a week of emotional trauma upon trauma and no Glossy Black Cockatoos to be seen, when eventually two were spotted flying freely understandably human spirits accepted the lift. There maybe only one string on that lyre but we can still make a tune.
Nature does not hope, Glossy black cockatoos don`t hope, Koalas don`t hope but Koalas and cockatoos feel pain, they run and fly from the fire and hide from the rain and they hurt especially when their arms, legs and wings burn. This sentience is the basis of our hope and rather than hiding under the duvet we should fulfil our part of the bargain and aid their life and existence.
Big heads up to the wonderful people at:
https://www.naturefoundation.org.au/support-us/glossy-black-cockatoo-recovery-program
DAVE CLARK OCTOBER 2020
Daves thoughts 