Having read about the armed gangs going after armed poachers in Nepal I was wondering how much it would cost to have them hunt down a certain obese American lad in the country. If he was painted in stripes first before being pushed into the jungle I would pay good money for the resultant video.
I always feel we take the wrong approach to protecting wildlife. All the money is pumped into protecting the big predators, mostly just because everyone knows about them and goes "aww they're so cute someone should help them".
But really, almost all the biodiversity is down the food chain. If more work went into protecting plant diversity, insects, small mammals etc. then aside from the poaching all the big animals would take care of themselves.
Broadly I'd agree. I remember a biologist saying that he thought of insects as 'the little creatures that did all the work'. Essentially without insects, we'd have a fraction of the energy available to us, as they helpfully convert it from plant and microbial life for us to use. Same goes for biodiversity generally, you simply can't have larger life without a sustainable chain.
>aside from the poaching
I think this is the main reason why conservation can sometimes center on large animals so much. I rather wish more of a concerted effort was made to devalue the market for poaching. Simply making it illegal to own/import/sell clearly isn't enough.
