Fersiwn Gymareg ar gael yma
Artist and animator, Sean Harris, has for the past two decades used animation as a way of exploring and expressing the complicated relationship between people and landscapes across Wales and beyond. His latest project, The Conference of the Birds: Curlew & Great Auk, gives a voice to two iconic birds - one familiar to older generations and the other a more distant symbol of the far-reaching consequences of our actions as consumers.
In this guest blog, Sean gives his view on the journey he's seen between people, landscapes and the iconic species that call Wales their home.
‘He made no cry. I strangled him.’
This is Icelandic farmhand and fisherman Sigurdur Islefson’s memory of dispatching one of the last two great auks on Earth. The words are from a series of accounts given by the group of men who in June 1844 rowed for twelve hours, navigating treacherous waters, to reach the island of Eldey. Here they found and throttled the last known pair, rendering the species extinct.
In the pursuit of telling a good story it would be easy to vilify the fourteen men. However, the simple reality is that they were farmers struggling to provide for their families in a harsh landscape. They had no concept of ‘extinction’ and were simply responding to an opportunity created by ‘market forces’. Great auk numbers had plummeted in the previous two centuries: the consequence of the decimation of colonies for feathers, oil and food. This increasing rarity created an acute demand for specimens – for which men of means on both sides of the Atlantic were prepared to pay top dollar. Thus, whilst 1844 was the year in which the great auk is thought to have breathed its last, the writing was on the wall for the species long before that.
We, by contrast, know that along with many other species the curlew is now at an advanced point on the same trajectory towards extinction. This, as has been well documented, is bad news for us because we are entirely dependent on biodiversity for our own well-being.
Thus, the silent gasps of the last pair of great auks are an apt metaphor for what we as a society are currently inflicting on ourselves and our environment. We are tightening the grip around our own necks – and doing so in full possession of the facts.
We acknowledge that our food production system is of critical importance in reopening the airwaves. Our response? To butt heads, apparently over matters of bureaucratic detail relating to ‘assets’.
I know it’s complicated. When I embarked on the project The Conference of the Birds (currently occupying the Senedd and Pierhead building) I decided that I would simply attempt to listen; so as to gain as much understanding of differing perspectives as possible – and particularly those of farmers.
This approach built on earlier work in the Somerset Levels where, working with the RSPB’s Great Crane Project, I got to know and work with farmers who had adapted their businesses in response to the catastrophic floods of 2013/14. “You can’t fight nature” mused one farmer who had abandoned intensive dairy farming in the wake of the disaster.
As a consequence, here in Wales I have come to know farmers who have planted thousands of oaks, who are diversifying in intelligent and impressively creative fashion, who are embracing regenerative or ‘nature friendly’ practices. They are probably still a minority – because these circular approaches go against a grain in which productivity equates to self worth.
But they are there and they are growing in number. They are heroes and should be valued as such; must be remunerated as such – and quickly so that more will join their ranks. It is abundantly clear that the well-being of both current and future generations depends on it. The fate of the last great auks is portent of the dark alternative that awaits us.