Some thoughts about freedom.

 Free the beavers! 

Sadiq Khan is calling for beavers to be released into the wild across the country. If we get a Labour government, he believes his party should make that a policy. At the moment they can only be released into large enclosures, whatever that means. And I wonder how you ensure they don’t just follow the waterways and spread out through the country. After all, they seem like pretty clever creatures and they are very good for the environment, keeping rivers clean, preventing flooding, helping increase fish stocks and so on. Besides, they are very attractive and amusing to watch. I think it was beavers I saw at Whipsnade recently but, of course, they may have been otters. Sadiq Khan has been involved in releasing beavers into an ‘enclosed area’ and has this to say: “I challenge you not to smile, when you see these beavers swimming around, in that lovely park in Ealing, and I want other people to enjoy just watching wildlife and having a smile.”

The current Environment Secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has said her department would not be legalising beaver releases as she had “other priorities”.  We don’t know what Labour would plan to do. Sources say the shadow Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) team is still writing its nature manifesto. That could mean anything at all. We’ll have to wait and see. 

In the meantime:  Free The Beavers! - nobody, not even beavers, should be restricted to a small area and prevented from leaving! 

Thinking of animals, here’s a link to an article about animals in zoos, arguing that zoos are bad for animals. 

This probably has some truth in it, but I still find myself thinking that they serve a good purpose if they make our children aware of the plight of some of the world’s creatures. (The children’s TV series “Octonauts” does a good job at that too, by the way. The smallest grandson and ai have learnt a lot from that series.) And for most us it’s the only chance we get to see some magnificent animals in the flesh. Personally, I love to see the elephants at Chester Zoo!

Getting back to the article about zoos, I was amused by the story of the chimpanzees’ tea parties at London Zoo in the 1970s. When the chimps learned how to pour tea properly instead of throwing stuff around, the public was disappointed. The apes were retrained to spill the tea, throw food around, drink from the teapot’s spout. Being fast learners, they excelled at this, too – establishing a routine with comic flair, popping the cups in the teapot when the keeper’s back was turned. The ruse worked. Contemporary newspapers reported the animals behaving with their “usual unselfconscious abandon”.

When our children were little, we used to take them to a small zoo in Southport, incongruously placed next to the funfair, which must have been rather stressful for the few animals they kept there. In spite of this, they were known as a place that hand reared young chimps rejected by their mothers. Our children were fascinated by these toddler chimps who would come and interact with small humans, putting their hands against the glass of their enclosure in a kind of high-five gesture. 

Rather sadder was the older chimp, reportedly either retired tea-party chimpanzee or maybe a “pet” who had become aggressive and unmanageable as he grew older. He too used to perform for the public, jumping around, shouting angrily until he drew a largish crowd. At that point he would disappear into the covered area at the rear of his enclosure and re-emerge to throw handfuls of excrement at the laughing, and then squealing, crowd! He knew how to get his revenge! 

Desperate situations lead to desperate measures!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!