What is the best way to treat these aquatic cousins of the elephant, peaceful 1600 pound vegetarians, whose numbers are dwindling to level that those who care can recognise every known living individual by their 'distinctive markings'. Should we accept our responsibility and rescue a species close the edge of oblivion or should we chop them up with rotating blades?
(You can probably guess which answer the human race has chosen.)

Living in the tidal waters of Florida, manatees are shy, placid, and voracious, they are also one of the most endangered species on the planet. Of course, they are cheerfully ignorant of this fact, but painfully aware of its cause  - without exception manatees all have skegs from their close encounters with powerboats. They are not stupid, they know to avoid boats, but they are not speedy either, so they never get the chance. (At 1600 pounds, don't expect anything more than a gentle paddle. It is petrol power that creates wakes .)

What would it matter if the world was without a species of floating herbivore? Wouldn't it be better letting fat Floridians plough in and out of all those coastal inlets in their speed-boats pretending they are James Bond without having to worry if they hit a submerged sea-cow?

It is obviously deplorable, but regrettably, I cannot offer a good&good reason There can be no doubt that the planets will still progress through heaven spinning obliviously, even if we wipe out every large mammal that has lacked the foresight to be an intensively farmed foodstuff. Nobody needs tigers or rhinos, elephants or foxes. What have the rodents ever done for us? Orang-utans can go hang. A lack of llamas should not alarm us. The polar bear it is not a productive member of society. What is the point of saving all those whales if they haven't the gratitude to thanks us?

After all, that oft quoted, mis-translated, antiquated tome of spurious, superstitious, anachronistic authority starts by suggesting it's okay to carry right on as we have been going...

"Then God said, let us make a man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (Genesis 1.26)

"And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every foul of the earth, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. 3. Every moving things that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things." (Genesis 9.2-3)

Of course, that was the old, old, olden days, but if anything things got worse once that lovey-dovey bearded hippie, God Jnr., suggested cannibalism or as he saw it theophagy. And that is just Christendom,.don't get me started on the dietary habits of the Japanese, or that hideous euphemism 'bushmeat'.

If it is a conundrum, it is not a particularly tricky one. A tiger skin rug is hideous, the same skin wrapped round a living, breathing tiger is beautiful. Whalesong is haunting, but it is the unheeded cries of hunted and harpooned Minke that should give you nightmares. Or Clive the manatee, who spends all day munching methodically through the over-abuntant floating vegetation, with an occasional barrel-roll to work up his appetite, when along comes Joe Outboard in a mad hurry, the two meet briefly and with luck Clive loses a few chunks of blubber.

I could not advocate the extremes of Jainism, for one thing, as JBS Haldane noticed, there are more bugs than anyone could realistically want. (Those people complaining about a lack of biodiversity should be told to shake a tree in the rainforest very hard and be expected to show nothing but delight at the many and varied creatures that land in their hair or fall down the backs of their shirts.) Besides which, in my time I have certainly eaten insects, rodents, cats, dogs, horses and a few molluscs, any aficionado of the late night kebab could hardly do otherwise.

But I solemly state here and now, I will never eat a whale, a rhino, a monkey, or a bat, and I will never go waterskiing in Florida.

Saturday, 5th August 2000