ANOTHER VOICE
How the blonds swap babies for toads
AUBERON WAUGH
One of the joys of writing this column, from which I must shortly take an extended break while I apply myself to my memoirs, is that for the last 14 years I have been receiving letters from all sorts of people all over the world giving me the benefit of their life's experience and observations of the passing scene. If at times I have seemed more than decently knowledgeable about a kakapu, the ground-dwelling nocturnal New Zealand parrot, or the rabbit-eared bandicoot, still to be found in Australia's Northern Territories by those with a sharp ear for its tremulous whistling love-call, it has usually been because a correspondent has been telling me about them. My life allows me few opportunities to wander round the Northern Territories, and in any case I am now rather hard of hearing.
It does not normally seem necessary to acknowledge the help I receive from these correspondents, many of whom would be embarrassed to see their names blazoned in The Spectator, and even more of whom would be embarrassd to be associated with whatever conclusions I might draw from the information they have supplied. But a new correspondent, Mr D. R. Reid, of Sydenham, has supplied not only the in- formation but also the conclusions, in three long and informative letters written over the past six weeks, and it would be foolish not to acknowledge his help because although his conclusion, which is fascinat- ing, has an application outside the validity of any individual piece of evidence, only he can vouch for the accuracy of the evidence, which I have found uncheckable.
He starts with a number of queries. Recently, he was listening to the BBC Radio 4 programme Wildlife which in- formed him that red deer in the Highlands had suffered a population explosion which was leading them to destroy the habitat for themselves and other creatures of similar diet. Almost in the same week, he read a piece in the (Scots) Sunday Mail which said they were rapidly being exterminated by motorised gangs of Glasgow poachers. Which account was correct, he asked him- self, or was neither?
He then remembered reading similar contradictory evidence about the elephants of southern Africa. Four years ago, they were so numerous as to be destroying their habitat and in need of drastic culling. Today, they were in danger of extinction. The konprey (or possibly kouprey — D. R. Reid's odd handwriting and frequent use of what must be native names do not make my quest any easier), largest of the cattle family, apparently discovered only in 1937 and officially declared extinct as a result of the Vietnam war, is now to be found grazing and chewing its cud throughout Indo-China, although 'in frighteningly low numbers'. Rare European travellers in the impenetrable Hongbune Forest of eastern Zaire have found colonies — empires — of gorillas, thought to have disappeared from the scene, although 'they may be threatened'.
Actually, they may have been found in the impenetrable Itonburi Forest of east- ern Zaire depending upon how one Yeads D. R. Reid's script. Possibly they abound in both. But why on earth should they have been thought to be threatened in their impenetrable forests, from which most of the native humans have almost certainly departed to take up the post of super- numerary brush-wallah in Lonrho's offices in Kinshasa? The answer to this question contains the germ of D. R. Reid's great explanation, but readers must bear with me while I supply a few more examples.
The Noisy Shout Bird of Western Au- stralia, after years of 'extinction', has recently been found living quietly a few miles out of Perth. As humans congregated more and more in the cities, these agree- able creatures have been able to get on with their shouting unremarked. Why, oh why, do we assume them extinct? Why are great efforts being made to save an unusual toad in Majorca which was discovered there only in 1981, but had been living on that crowded island for many thousands of years unobserved? Why should it now be assumed to be threatened? Exactly the same question should be asked about the American black-footed prairie .ferret, which has recently been the subject of a $3 million rescue attempt when, after being declared extinct, a small colony was disco- vered. The truth would appear to be that being nocturnal and living underground, the black-footed prairie ferret can get along perfectly well on its own, without the benefit of these demented Bookerites.
All these statements of imminent extinc- tion rely on what are admitted to be rough guesses by naturalists who certainly have an interest in stirring up the slumbering Bookerite in us all. Tigers, recently re- duced on a 'rough guess' to 1,400 in the entire sub-continent, have recently been terrorising the Sunderlands (not an ex- patriate couple, I deduce, but a region in India where the inhabitants had every reason to hope they would not be terror- ised by man-eating tigers). . . . I could go on for a long time, and D. R. Reid does so. His explanation is an alarming one.
Although the Crystal Palace McDo- nald's, which he frequents, has had a workforce with representatives, in their time, from the following African tribes: Luo, Kikuyu, Ibibio, Yoruba, Fanti, Ijaw, Mende, Ashanti and Ga — he has never met an African who was remotely con- cerned about the extinction of a species. President Moi of Kenya must be unique, unless he is putting it on for the benefit of the Bookerites. Only the white races are remotely interested in the subject, hyster- ically inventing more and more species which require their officious concern. Mr Reid sees an unconscious motivation in all this, arising from a suppressed awareness that whatever may be happening to the okapi or extraordinary Majorcan toad, it is the blond, blue-eyed white races of Europe — what he calls the Nordic sub-race which, through its inability to breed at replacement level and its propensity to intermarry with the dominant genes of the dark-haired, brown-eyed south, which faces extinction within little over a hundred years.
On the question of the white races' refusal to breed at replacement level, he is plainly correct. Western Europe in general — and West Germany in particular — is already below the replacement level before the great pill and abortion explosion of the 1970s. In fact a united Germany of 80 million citizens represents very little threat to anybody. Germany's birth-rate peaked before the first world war. It now has the lowest birth-rate in the world (says D. R. Reid) and will soon be a small nation of mumbling geriatrics.
The number of blonds in England, he says, has fallen from 65 per cent in 1925 to 10 per cent today. In the army's records of the Great War, we will find that the vast majority of soldiers were blond with blue or grey eyes. That is as it may be. Perhaps we will have to make do with brunettes. But I do feel that we should encourage the younger generation to take less interest in extraordinary Majorcan toads, more in having babies.
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