Independent THE INDEPENDENT

TUESDAY
17 NOVEMBER 2009

Life The T
Besten
Bu ggie
PAG
E7
s

Notes from
Robinson Crusoe Island
414 miles off the coast
of Chile is a place
untouched by man for four
million years.
Now it is in peril.
A special report
by Steve Connor
Plus How to stay flu-free c Celebrating Kwanzaa c Jeremy Laurance
2 Independent Life Cover story
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Where the wild
things are
Bursting with endemic flora and fauna, the Juan Fernández
Archipelago is a hothouse of evolution. But alien species
introduced by humans are now threatening this remote
‘Galápagos of plants’. Science editor Steve Connor reports
I
t takes about two hours by light aircraft
to fly to the remote Pacific islands of the
Juan Fernández Archipelago, 414 miles
off the coast of Chile. That’s all it takes
to destroy the 4 million-year isolation
that has protected this oceanic jewel
from biological destruction.
Most people who have heard of Juan Fernández
know of its links with Daniel Defoe’s classic desert-
island tale of Robinson Crusoe (pictured, far right).
Indeed, the biggest island in the archipelago was
renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966 in honour
of a Scottish mariner called Alexander Selkirk who
was self-marooned there in 1704 for four years and
four months – an endurance test that is said to have
inspired Defoe’s imaginary character.
But the Juan Fernández Archipelago has a more
important story to tell. It centres on a long history
of geographical isolation that has made it one of the
world’s most exquisite hothouses of evolution. Its
separation from the mainland has meant it has devel-
oped an endemic evolutionary signature of its own.
The islands are one of few places on earth that
have never been colonised by humans until recent-
ly. Selkirk was not the first person to set eyes on
the islands – that was the Spanish navigator Juan
Fernández in 1574 – but his stay there marked the
beginnings of a biological catastrophe that res-
onates on islands throughout the world. The Juan
THE INDEPENDENT
TUESDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2009
of the features of endemic species is that they are
0
MILES
300 PARAGUAY
BRAZIL
incredibly sensitive to change and the arrival of
people usually springs dramatic change to islands,
particularly when they bring new species with
PACIFIC
OCEAN
ARGENTINA
Santiago
them,” says Alan Saunders, a New Zealander with
a vast experience of eradicating invasive species
from islands. “At the end of the day we have two
Buenos URUGUAY
choices. Either we get rid of the invasives or we
Juan CHILE Aires
Fernández stand by and see extinctions taking place.”
Archipelago
111
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
The Juan Fernández Archipelago, which is admin-
istered as a “special territory” by Chile, consists of
Falkland three principal islands. The second oldest, formed
Islands by an undersea volcanic eruption about 4 million
(UK)
years ago, is Robinson Crusoe Island. It was previ-
ously known as Isla Más a Tierra, meaning the “island
Fernández Archipelago epitomise what can hap- closest to land”, the name Selkirk knew it by.
pen to unique, endemic species when their remote Another island 121 miles due west of Robinson,
territory is suddenly invaded by alien species and slightly larger with taller mountains and deep-
introduced by man. er ravines, is Alexandro Selkirk Island, although
An endemic species is one that exists where it has confusingly Selkirk himself never set foot on this
evolved. On islands, they are often found nowhere island and couldn’t even see it from his mountain-
else and are exquisitely vulnerable to invasive alien top lookout on Robinson Island. Alexandro Selkirk
species. Juan Fernández is a microcosm of what’s Island, in Selkirk’s day, was called Isla Más Afuera,
taking place in just about every remote, pristine meaning the island further out to sea. The third
island on earth where human encroachment has island is Santa Clara which Selkirk could have seen
resulted in the introduction of foreign species. “One but probably never visited. It is the smallest of the
THE INDEPENDENT
TUESDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2009
three and lies off the western tip of
Robinson Island.
Daniel Defoe may have made
this part of the world famous
(although he never acknowl-
edged in print that his fiction-
al epic was inspired by
Selkirk’s adventures), but the
real story of these dramatical-
ly beautiful islands is one of
invasive alien species. These
animals and plants have been
introduced by humans, either
deliberately or accidentally. They
quickly establish themselves in a way
that wipes out the endemics that arose
there. They are different from the native,
non-alien species that evolved some- Scores of
where else but have come to the islands
naturally, living alongside the en- alien species
demics. Scores of alien species have have established
established themselves on the islands themselves on
since Selkirk’s day. The goats have
been joined by rabbits and rats, feral the islands”
cats and domestic cattle. Alien plants
include blackberry brambles and Chilean myrtle species, led to the Juan Fernández Archipelago
berry shrubs – two of the most invasive and dan- being rated by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation
gerous of the invading flora. Trust in Jersey as the most important eco-region
The endemic flora on Robinson and Selkirk in the world out of list of 100 threatened sites in
islands are especially rich – and vul-
nerable – which is why botanists
refer to the archipelago as “the
Galápagos for plants”. To
date, scientists have identi-
fied 131 endemic plants on
the islands, which means
that nearly two thirds of the
total number of native plant
species found on the islands
arose there – a floral endem-
ism of 62 per cent. The islands
have the highest density of endem-
ic plants anywhere in the world.
But it is not just plants. The
islands are home to three endemic
avian species and four endemic sub-
species – which means 45 per cent
of Chile’s entire quota of endemic
birds can be found on these small
Pacific outcrops of volcanic rock.
The level of species endemism in
birds and other vertebrates alone,
combined with the dire threats
posed by the invasion of alien
Cover story Independent Life
Paradise lost: El Padre
bay on Robinson
Crusoe island (far left);
a male firecrown
hummingbird (left)
MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty
dire need of preservation. “Juan Fernández has
generated a large number of endemic species
and the proportion of endemic species to total
species richness is extremely high,” says Stephan
Funk, senior conservation biologist at the trust.
“And endemic species on very small islands have
nowhere else to go, which is why conservation
efforts there are so important.”
Of the 123 endemic plants that have been clas-
sified in a risk category, five have been declared
“extinct”, 72 are “endangered and rare”, 21 are
“endangered” and a further 21 have been classed
as “vulnerable”. Some 14 plant species have few-
er than 10 individuals living in the wild, and a
handful of plant species are represented by just
one known individual growing in its natural habi-
tat – the most precarious position for an endem-
ic island plant.
The archipelago represents less than 1 per
cent of Chilean national territory but accounts
for 60 per cent of the country’s extinct species,
55 per cent of the nation’s “endangered” plants,
and 59 per cent of those labelled “endangered
and rare”. It is easily the most critical region in
Chile for plant conservation, and this is a coun-
try that is recognised as a global “hotspot” for
plant biodiversity.
The deforestation of previous centuries has
been largely stopped and the islands are now a
3
The real Crusoe
Alexander Selkirk
I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
William Cowper’s poem, The Solitude of
Alexander Selkirk, immortalised a man whose
experiences were said to have also inspired
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The seventh
son of a cobbler, William Selkirk was born in
1676 in Lower Largo, Fife. He ran away to sea
to avoid an appointment with the local courts
over a fracas with his brother and ended up
on the 16-gun privateer the Cinque Ports with
a royal licence to plunder Spanish ships.
He fell out with the ship’s captain, con-
vinced the vessel was unseaworthy, and asked
to put ashore on the uninhabited island of
Más a Tierra. But almost as soon as the ship
weighed anchor in September 1704, Selkirk
had second thoughts and pleaded to be let
back aboard – a request the captain refused.
Selkirk took with him a few tools, a cooking
pot, a musket and powder, tobacco and a
Bible. He ended up staying on the island for
four years and four months. He lived on cab-
bages and turnips and hunted the island’s
feral goats, which he caught by running
them down on foot.
When his clothes wore out, he sewed
goat-skin trousers, jacket and hat. He spent
much of his time reading his Bible or waiting
at his lookout post on a mountain pass,
where he would scan both east and west hori-
zons for passing ships.
Once, a Spanish ship docked in the bay and
he had to run away and hide in a tree, fearing
the Spanish would make him their slave.
Eventually, in 1709, he was rescued by a
British ship. The captain, Woodes Rogers,
remarked that Selkirk could barely speak and
looked wilder than the island’s goats.
protected national park as well as a biodiversity
zone, but the problem of invasives is, if anything,
getting worse. “The forests are fully protected, so
there is no longer direct anthropogenic impact,
but there are indirect effects of invasive species,”
says Peter Hodum of theUniversity of Puget Sound
near Seattle, who has studied the islands extensive-
ly. “We are no longer cutting forest but the fact that
we’ve brought in species that have established
themselves in remnant patches of intact forest is
now the greatest threat to that habitat,” he adds.
111
Almost all the threats posed to the survival of the
endemic animals and plants living in the Juan
Fernández Archipelago stem from contact with
Europeans. When Alexander Selkirk fell out with
his captain and chose to abandon ship for the
island of Mas á Tierra (Robinson Crusoe Island),
he took a Bible, a pouch of tobacco, some cloth-
ing and bedding, a musket and powder, naviga-
tion instruments and a few tools, including a
hatchet for chopping wood.
He thought he would only be there for just a few
weeks before being rescued by a passing ship but
the weeks turned to months and years. He sur-
vived by hunting the feral goats that had been
introduced to the islands by previous mariners
4 Independent Life Cover story
wanting to ensure a supply of fresh meat on
the high seas. More than a century before
Selkirk’s adventure, the navigator Juan Fernán-
dez is said to have left just four goats on the small-
er island of Más Afuera (Alexandro Selkirk
Island). Now there are about 3,500 goats there.
Goats, which eat just about anything they can
chew, were to be the start of a 300-year alien
invasion. Domestic rabbits and cats soon
escaped into the wild, the latter to deal with the
rats and mice that jumped ship. And about 50
years ago, someone introduced a small South
American predator called a coati – for no other
reason than it would be of interest to people visit-
ing Robinson Island. Like the cat and rat, the coati
has made light work of ground-nesting birds.
The native and endemic birds, which include a
seabird called the pink-footed shearwater (Puffi-
nus creatopus) that digs underground burrows
to lay its eggs, are no match for these introduced
predators. The islands have no natural mammals
apart from an endemic species of fur seal, and
the native birds are quite unused to these intelli-
gent, agile predators.
Like many endemic animals on remote islands
they are incredibly naïve when it comes to inva-
sive predators and do not display the usual flight
behaviour seen in birds on the mainland.
Ground-nesting birds in particular are also high-
ly vulnerable to having their eggs stolen by four-
legged predators, even those as small as rats and
mice. Hodum says that even rabbits have been
shown to disturb the breeding patterns of the
pink-footed shearwater by invading its burrows.
As for the plant-eating invaders, their impact
is just as devastating. Invasive herbivores can
turn a rich landscape of temperate forests and
fertile valleys into an overgrazed wasteland.
Goats in particular are renown for nibbling the
most-out-of-the-way shoots, preventing a mature
forest from renewing itself with young saplings.
In many ways, invading plants can be even
more pernicious than the invasive animals. The
top three floral invaders are the elm-leaf black-
berry (Rubus ulmifolius), the Chilean myrtle-
berry bush or murtilla (Ugni molinae) and a
South American shrub called the maqui (Aris-
totelia chilensis), which forms dense thickets
where nothing but itself can grow. A common
feature they possess is the ability to grow rapid-
ly throughout the year. They quickly out-com-
pete the native plants for light, nutrients and
space and strangle endemics in their path.
But it’s not just the endemic plants that are
wiped out by these invading triffids. Take the
case of the blackberry bramble, which was intro-
duced on to Robinson Island as recently as the
1930s to serve as a boundary-forming hedging
plant that would also provide fruit for jam. In the
sub-tropical moist climate it grows vigorously
throughout the frost-free seasons. In the space of
three or four years it can overgrow a full-sized
Luma tree (Myrceugenia fernándeziana), an
endemic species on Robinson Island that is also
the preferred nesting site for the island’s iconic
firecrown hummingbird (Sephanoides fernan-
densis), the only species of hummingbird in the
world that is endemic to an oceanic island.
So an innocuous-looking plant brought to the
island less than a century ago is helping push the
world’s only endemic oceanic hummingbird to
the brink of extinction. Just 1,000 firecrown hum-
mingbirds are believed to live on Robinson Island,
compared with perhaps as many as 10,000 when
Selkirk was stewing goat meat over a fire and
dreaming of being rescued by a passing ship.
No-one knows how long the firecrown
THE INDEPENDENT
TUESDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2009
which was formed about a million years ago dur-
ing an undersea volcanic eruption, making it about
3 million years younger than Robinson Island.
Island endemism Ingo Hahm, a young ornithologist from Muen-
ster University in Germany, probably knows
Darwin’s discovery more than anyone about the mysterious rayadi-
to, which lives within the steep and highly-inac-
cessible ravines on Selkirk, an island with an
One of Charles Darwin’s great achievements exceptionally difficult terrain. Hahm spends up
was to provide an explanation for how new to 10 weeks at a time studying the bird on his own
species arise through natural selection. He in the hope of working out how it lives so that sci-
realised islands play a key role because they entists can come up with some kind of meaning-
allow a few stranded members of a species to ful strategy for saving it from extinction.
become geographically and reproductively By mapping the territorial boundaries bet-
isolated from their tribe. The isolation, over ween competing rayaditos, Hahm has come up
many generations, eventually leads to a physi- with an estimate of the bird’s breeding popula-
cal and genetic divergence, and hence the evo- tion. He reckons there are just 140 individual raya-
lution of a new species that becomes endemic ditos still living on the island – the only place they
to that island. The islands of Juan Fernández are found. “It is the rarest endemic animal species
are far enough away from the mainland for of Chile,” Hahm says.
island endemism to have occurred many And it’s getting rarer. The island’s goats are
times, but not too far as to never receive eating through the rayadito’s habitat of endemic
occasional visitors from the mainland. plants, and rats take any eggs they can find. This
is why the rayadito is one of the most endangered
birds in the world.
hummingbird has existed on Robinson Island – But as rare as the rayadito is, its predicament
estimates range from 100,000 years to more than is not as precarious as some of the archipelago’s
a million. It almost certainly evolved from a endemic plants. One species, called Chenopodi-
species found on the mainland of South America um sanctae-clarae, is represented in the wild by
called the greenback hummingbird. A storm just one community of individuals living on a sin-
probably blew a few greenbacks onto Robinson gle rock on Santa Clara island, which thankfully
Island many tens of thousand of years ago where has had its goats eradicated. Several other plants
they formed a breeding colony. exist only as a single individual in the wild. One
Once these marooned greenbacks had estab- such species is Dendroseris gigantea, with a final
lished themselves, a long period of isolation led to representative in nature that is a lone plant on
the evolution of a new species, with distinctively Selkirk Island, although it is now being propagat-
different coloration and behaviour to the green- ed artificially on Robinson Island.
back. (It is this process of speciation – the forma- Should these single individuals die out in the
tion of new species – that Charles Darwin discov- wild without any propagation in captivity, then so
ered after he had visited the Galápagos islands to does the species – and another extinction occurs.
the north of Juan Fernández.) This happened a few years ago to the
The firecrown’s unique traits last living male plant of a species
include the widest differences in called Robinsonia berteroi, type of
physical appearance between the For cats, groundsel, which was chewed to
two sexes of any hummingbird – so the island is a death by rats. No one had thought of
different are the males and females protecting it.
compared to other hummingbirds supermarket One of the most unusual gems on
they were originally thought to be that you don’t Robinson is a flowering plant belong-
two species. Firecrowns also exhibit ing to a plant family called the lac-
the charming habit of saving valu- have to pay for” toridaceae. DNA studies and discov-
able energy by sometimes grasping eries of fossilised pollen in other
on to the underside of a nectar-filled flower with parts of the world indicate that this family may
their feet to take a rest from hovering. be something like 100 million years old, yet the
Like many species that have evolved on only living specimens exist on Juan Fernández,
islands, the firecrown exhibits a remarkable which is no older than 4 million years old. It has
tameness. Within hours of landing on Robinson, been studied by Tod Stuessy, a botanist and Juan
I encountered a family of firecrowns feeding on Fernández specialist at the University of Vienna.
the dangling orange flowers of an abutilon bush, “The lactoridaceae in the archipelago are the
a non-native but non-invasive species. To my sur- only family of flowing plants restricted to an
prise I could almost reach out to grasp these lit- oceanic island. They represent a remnant popula-
tle birds without them showing any signs of fear. tion of something that probably went extinct
As one might expect, such naïvety is lethal in the everywhere else millions of years ago,” Dr Stuessy
presence of the many feral cats living on Robin- says. “It’s a mystery how they got there.”
son. As Peter Hodum says: “For cats, it’s like a It’s rather like finding a family of dinosaurs liv-
walk-in supermarket you don’t have to pay for.” ing on the Isle of Wight.
But even if a young firecrown survives the The importance of the archipelago in terms of
attentions of the local cats long enough to breed, its endemic flora cannot be underestimated. It is in Paris, is an exhilarating if exhausting experi-
its eggs can still be eaten by the island’s band of not so much the total number of endemic flora ence. The footpath from the western point of the
climbing black rats (Rattus rattus). That is if they that can be found in the “Galápagos for plants”, island climbs slowly to the tall, volcanic peaks
can still find a nesting site in any of the tall Luma it is their sheer density – something I experi- that bisect one half of Robinson from the other.
trees that have not yet been strangled by black- enced for myself. Selkirk had his lookout at this summit. Standing
berry brambles. on Selkirk’s rock, it is possible to scan both the
As iconic as the firecrown is, however, it is not 111 east and west horizons at once. It became a dai-
the most endangered bird in the Juan Fernández ly ritual for Selkirk.
Archipelago. That is a small songbird called the Walking half the length of Robinson Island, a dis- As we moved from the lower grassy slopes to
Rayadito de Masafuera (Aphrastura masafuer- tance of some 10 miles, with botanist Philippe Dan- the forested peaks with their lush tree ferns and
ae) that lives on the more distant Selkirk Island, ton of the National Museum of Natural History tall Lumas, the trilling sounds of the firecrown
THE INDEPENDENT
TUESDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2009
hummingbird were punctuated by Danton’s fre-
quent calls of “endémique!” as he spied yet anoth-
er Robinsonian rarity. In the space of several
hours, I lost count of how may “endémiques” he
had documented.
Danton has witnessed many changes to Robin-
son in the 12 years he has spent surveying the
island’s flora. “The firecrown hummingbird is a
bird from the forest and I had a chance when I
started working here to see some parts of the
pristine forest,” he says. “Today, there is not one
Nature studded
(from left):
Rhaphithamnus
venustus; a female
Juan Fernández
firecrown
hummingbird; non-
native blackberry;
Gunnera peltata;
Juania australis
feathered palm; a
male firecrown
part of the forest where you cannot find an inva-
sive species – they are everywhere, in every part
of the forest. It would be difficult for Selkirk to
recognise the forest now.”
Of all the invasive species to have arrived on
the islands of Juan Fernández , humans must
rate as the most destructive, even without their
role as a vector for alien species. Since Juan Fer-
nández first charted the position of the archipel-
ago in 1574, humans have transformed the land-
scape, which had until then escaped human
colonisation, either by the Polynesian seafarers
to the west, who stopped at Easter Island, or the
South American natives to the east.
When European mariners arrived, they quick-
ly exploited the forests for wood. Robinson has
also been a penal colony and the site of a Spanish
castle. In 1853, a permanent colony of settlers
from the Chilean mainland was established and
cattle were introduced to graze the lower grassy
slopes that had been cleared of trees.
Today, Robinson Island has a permanent pop-
ulation of about 750 inhabitants living in the tiny
village of San Juan Bautista overlooking the
same Cumberland Bay where Alexander
Selkirk’s ship landed in 1704. The population has
risen by 150 in just two years, which is on top of
the 2,500 tourists who visit the island each year.
Ivan Leiva Silva, who has been director of
the Juan Fernández National Park for 15 years,
says that 75 per cent of the land on Robinson
Island has suffered erosion though deforesta-
tion, fires and overgrazing by livestock. He
says 40 per cent of this erosion is irreversible,
and of the 1,800 hectares of forests on the
island, just 250 hectares are still in the same
pristine state they were in when Selkirk
chopped wood for his fire.
But Leiva Silva still has hope for what remains
of the archipelago’s endemic wildlife. He has wit-
nessed a change in the mood of the Robinson
islanders, especially the younger generation,
who have come to realise that a sustainable
future for them means looking after what is left
of the archipelago.
There are now delicate discussions taking
place between the Chilean government, the sci-
entists and the islanders on the eradication of the
invasive species. The locals support the removal
of rats and feral cats, at least on Selkirk Island, but
there are reservations about removing the goats,
which they see as part of their culture. On Robin-
son, islanders still keep pet cats, but they are
neutered and registered, each with their own
identification collar.
The Chilean government’s National Commis-
sion for the Environment (Conama) is support-
ing a conservation action plan for the Juan Fer-
nández islands and, ultimately, it will be for
Chile’s government to decide on what eradication
measures will be introduced, which can be legal-
ly enforced in what is, after all, a national park.
But time is running out. Philippe Danton won-
ders whether it is too late. “I am rather pes-
simistic because urgent action is needed to save
the extraordinary biodiversity that is here. It’s a
Animal planet: very difficult battle,” Danton says.
(above) an “We are going to learn a lot from this experi-
endemic fur seal. ence. This is an island, which is a small world sur-
Its population rounded by water. I live in a bigger world, and the
has recovered planet is also like an island. The planet is in a bad
since fur hunting state so everything we learn from studying this
has stopped smaller world would be very useful for the
future,” he says.
“Since a child, I have been told that mankind
is the only intelligent species. Now I would like
us to prove that.”
Cover story Independent Life
TalesoftheCity
Christopher
Maume
‘The British National party
is right about one thing:
the country is filling up’
am not a fan of the BNP,
I honest. Nick Griffin, patron
saint of the benighted and
cross-eyed, is as about as
high on my list of People To Hug
Before I Die as Melanie Phillips
or the Grimes twins are. By way
of consolation, they all enjoy ex-
alted placings in the list of People
To Hang Before I Die. But the
British National Party are right
about one thing: the country is
filling up. Bill Bryson could have
called his love letter to Britain
Notes from a Small Island With
Too Many People, Especially in
London.
The capital must have been hell
in the 1930s, at its peak population
of 8.5m. Now it’s a million down on
that – but most of them seem to
want to get into all the same
places as me at exactly the same
time (not to mention catch the
same train, shop in the same
supermarket and hail the same
cab). The museums in South
Kensington are a half-term mili-
tarised zone; taking the family to
the Thames Festival in the sum-
mer was to be caught up in a
human river running parallel to
the watery version, with no
chance to fight the tide. Alan
Johnson says he doesn’t lie awake
at night worrying about the
prospect of a UK population of
70m; well, he should.
If Johnson is perceived as the
bouncer who’s rubbish on the
door, I have a similar ongoing
domestic scandal: Filter and
Splat, goldfish acquired as
replacements for a dead cat
a few months ago, have been
recently joined by Tiffany and
Ruby, given as a birthday presents
to my stepdaughter by friends
who should have known better.
As a vegetarian who doesn’t really
believe in pets and disagrees with
keeping animals cooped up, I
wasn’t happy about the fish in
the first place, but was persuaded
that the tank we were buying
was big enough for two of them.
In fact, it’s big enough for three,
according to the manual; but
not four. At the expense of family
concord, arrangements are being
made to rehouse the asylum
seekers.
Piscine overcrowding causes
stress (“Stress? In fish? For God’s
sake,” my stepdaughter mut-
tered). It makes disease more like-
ly, depletes oxygen levels and
ramps up the parasite quotient.
Much like human overcrowding.
Perhaps with the plight of Splat
and Co in mind, there was a family
visit to London Aquarium at the
weekend (next to an attraction
whose name I forget, but it’s
5
something like “The London
Near-Death Experience”, its
punter-pulling strategy consisting
of dressing up its operatives in
ghoul gear and sending them out
to scare children and pensioners).
Behind the glass, the aquarium
was a mirror image of multicul-
tural Britain, in which by and
large we bump along together
peacefully: weedy sea dragons
sidled by big-bellied seahorses
(those are their names – I’m not
being rude), wrasses wriggled
past rays, leopard sharks shot the
breeze with turtles as big as my
kitchen table. No stress there,
then (and did you know that octo-
puses have blue blood and three
hearts and are more intelligent
than the average Premiership
footballer?). On the mammalian
side of the glass, however, the
human factor prevailed, which
wasn’t good. All those big brains,
so little thought.
It’s not that the Aquarium peo-
ple let too many in; I’m sure cur-
rent consumer-density guidelines
are adhered to. But it feels like too
‘Alan Johnson says
he doesn’t lie awake
worrying about a UK
population of 70m;
well, he should’
many, which I think is a function
of the general decline in urban
civility and the rise in urban
stupidity, all fuelled by population
overload. Signs and announce-
ments such as “Flash photogra-
phy can hurt the fishes’ eyes”
and “touching the rays is bad for
their health” were explicit and
unmistakable. But it was an
epileptic’s nightmare in there and
a ray-tickler’s dream. How thick
are people (they were mostly
natives, incidentally)? Outside,
on the steps leading up to
Westminster Bridge, an entire
family, six or seven of them, were
spread out across the full width
eating lunch while bottlenecks
built up above and below. Hand
me my Kalashnikov, darling, and
look the other way.
The depressing thing about all
this is that apart from breeding
less and forgetting about medical
advances, the human race has no
solution. Short of a souped-up
swine flu or something similar
wiping out a chunk of the world’s
population, we’re all, as they say,
doomed. Goodbye self-restraint,
hello mass extinction.
John Walsh will return next week