Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings a second look There has been mixed reaction to the massive volunteer effort to clean and rehabilitate thousands of oiled African penguins. While most people applaud the rescue of this endangered species, others have cast moral aspersions on it.
“Why help penguins rather than the poor?” asked a politically correct acquaintance. Taking the point further, a radio talk-show participant suggested that we cook the penguins and feed them to the homeless. The Johannesburg Child Welfare Society (JCWS) recently jumped on this bandwagon of ill-feeling with an advert showing a child pouring oil on his own head accompanied by the caption: “Now will you help me?” The small print asked “what kind of message” was being sent to children by the costly penguin rescue. These arguments and insinuations are misleading and harmful to both humans and animals. The central claim – that volunteers should be helping underprivileged people rather than penguins – rests on one or both of the following fallacies: that people have a fixed propensity for charity (and hence that an hour of voluntary labour or a rand spent on penguins necessarily means an hour or a rand less for other charities); and that there is a zero-sum relationship between human welfare and conservation. In the case of the JCWS advert, the issues are muddied further by its confusion of the cost of the penguin rescue (part
of which is borne by marine insurance) with funding, and its failure to distinguish between public and private support for welfare and conservation. Do people have a fixed propensity for charity? Perhaps in the normal course of events people allocate a fixed amount of resources (be it hours or rands) to charity, and that favouring one charity necessarily means disadvantaging another. We don’t know. But it is our strong impression that in a time of crisis, the calculus is totally different. If thousands of volunteers had not donated their time, the African penguin would be on the brink of extinction. Which is why we, and many others, spent less time with friends and family, reduced our working hours, and sacrificed academic and leisure activities during the first crucial six weeks of the rescue. In other words, the net time spent on charitable activities increased over the period (while our politically correct acquaintance helped neither the poor nor the penguins). Child welfare was not harmed by the penguin effort. Rather, the environmental heritage of all children was enriched – and at almost no cost to the state. Which brings us to the question of public funding and private donations. According to the JCWS advert, “R2E000 is available to give one penguin a once-off bath. Only R374 is available to support a child in foster care for an entire month.” This is disingenuous to the point of dishonesty. Firstly, the R2E000 was a rough initial estimate of the average cost of cleaning, feeding and rehabilitating the oiled birds. It entailed much more than a “once-off bath”. Subsequent estimates have halved the total projected costs. Secondly, the money is not freely “available”. The South African National Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob) has been running down its capital reserves to fund the crisis and is relying on most of it being refunded by the marine insurers of the Treasure (the sunken ship that spilled the oil). The government provides no support to Sanccob and private donations have to make up the difference. Thirdly, the advert fails to mention that the R374 is the government grant to foster parents and that the government contributes R4,3-million to the JCWS (that is, a third of its budget).
Child welfare is, and should be, a state responsibility – which is why the government spends over R2-billion a year on social security and welfare for needy children. This is well more than 100 times the mostly insurance- financed cost of the penguin rehabilitation (and not a third of the cost as mistakenly implied by the JCWS advert).
Private donations, such as the R9-million a year that goes to the JCWS, increase the total going to child welfare. In competing for private donations, the JCWS advert suggests that people should give as much (if not more) to Johannesburg children, who are already being supported by government grants and private donations, than they give to a one-off rescue of an endangered species. While it may not have intended to do so, the JCWS has bolstered the view that it is morally indefensible to give any money to save animals while human poverty exists. It implies that human needs always trump animal rights, even when animals are crippled by human action. Which brings us to the second misconception – that there is a conflict between conservation and human welfare. Two kinds of argument can be made about the importance of conservation for human beings. One points to the centrality of biological diversity and environmental protection for the long-run survival of all living things. The other takes a narrow economic view, arguing that in many cases conservation is in the direct and immediate interest of humans. The contribution of the African penguin to tourism in the Western Cape is one such example. Increased tourism means more jobs and income-earning potential for the currently unemployed (and poor). Arguing that the poor do not share enough of the fruits of this growth is an argument about distribution (and about economic policies to address this) – and not about the validity of conservation per se. Rather than sneering at the conservation effort, those concerned about child welfare should be lobbying the state to spend less on armaments and more on social security. The world would be a better place if more money was spent on children and conservation.