Opinion on hybrid animals

[Guest guest]

*I am not into saving 'the pure'; I am not a puritan. There are plenty of

puritans these days, purity of genes, purity of body, purity of thought ,

purity of culture, purity of language.......No, I am most definitely not

pure. I have genes from all over the place(a bit of French, a bit of

Iberian, a bit of North African, a bit of Roman....) My body has its its

history of excesses and 'bad' things have passed through it. Impure thoughts

are not unfamiliar to neurological pathways - is this jargon one of them?

Culturally speaking, I am a British Catalan hybrid, and my language, well,

judge for yourself. No, I am not pure, I am a total hybrid, I belong to

nowhere , I have no rights, I should not be preserved: I should be grateful

for not having been put down. * * Conservation should not be about saving

pure breeds, saving pure species, or saving pure types. Conservation is

about saving the whole thing, all the ecosystems, with all their species,

with all their individuals, with all their needs. These include the French

and the non-French, the pure and the hybrid, the common and the rare, the

loved and the hated; these include you and also me. *

**

* -Jordi

Casamitjana, former Director of the Zoo Check project of the Born Free

Foundation*