One of the most over-used clichés is that of the “urban jungle”.
When applied to London, it gives the wrong impression, because it’s nothing to do with the amazing but dwindling wildlife, it applies instead to the savage human residents.
The drab concrete greys and patchwork tarmac roads are a far cry from the soil and decaying leaf matter of a jungle floor. The housing estates and office blocks can’t compare with the venerable trees draped in vines with dense canopies filtering sun beams down through the steamy atmosphere trapped beneath their heavy leaves.
We do share some of the same wildlife as the jungles imagined in our childhood brains. The Metropolitan Police have revealed they’ve seized elephant tusks, rhino horns and tiger “parts” illegally traded in the capital. This revelation is contained in a new report from the World Animal Protection charity which claims 44% of all wildlife crime is due to poaching.
You’d think that sort of thing wouldn’t happen in the city; home to the mother of all parliaments. But even in the shadow of Big Ben, poachers were recently arrested fishing for eels by Westminster Bridge.
Eels are critically endangered as numbers of them have crashed 95%. These amazing creatures wriggle around the Thames and other freshwater rivers for between 6 to 20 years before migrating to the Sargasso Sea to breed. Their tiny offspring drift back on the Gulf Stream some 4,000 miles to their parent’s home-rivers to continue the cycle. Eels form a crucial part of the marine food chain, so when their population flatlines, so too do the numbers of a range of other fish and birds. This puts the seriousness of poaching eels into context.
The thoughtless act of poaching one species can lose us dozens of others. This wildlife crime is stupid, but others show humanity at its worse. In one particularly violent incident, officers caught four youths kicking a swan to death in one of our central London parks. I wonder how they’d fare facing-off against the tank of West African dwarf crocodiles seized during raid on a home in Croydon. The crocs are said to be capable of tearing limbs off a human and apparently do not make good pets!
The urban jungle can be defined by its savage residents, or we can reclaim it and turn it into a modern day Garden of Eden.