The Puppet government of animal farm

                In Orwell’s “Animal Farm” he discusses how the idea of socialism, in its purest form of equality for all, can be corrupted and turned into a brutal dictatorship as in North Korea or the Soviet Union.  For the purpose of his book Orwell writes of a farm in which the animals of a farm gloriously rebel against the tyrannical human owners and drive the farm. At first everything is well and the animals live in peace. But as time goes on the pigs seize control and begin to savagely enforce their rule upon the other animals, bettering their lives at the cost of everyone else’s.  On Bonaire, and many other islands across the world, the story is not so different. Except here the humans were not the deposed rulers. The humans installed the pigs as dictators in their absence.

Victorian sailors left pigs (and other herbivores) on islands they encountered as they explored the world as living larders for the next passersby.  Often in the absence of any natural predator, the pigs when about making themselves comfortable rooting through the native delicate habitats and generally eating everything in their paths.  In so doing, the pigs have persecuted often rare and unique island species of both plants and animals to the point of extinction.  Bonaire is no exception. The pigs, alongside goats and donkeys, have eaten everything that is not capable of slashing their tongues.  This is what has turned the island’s forests into the nightmarish tangle of thorns I have come to loathe.  This change has also robbed the native birds, and lizards, of a vast array of their foods, forcing them to steal from the gardens and farms of the now returned humans.

There are many ways of dealing with puppet dictators turned rogue, such as the herbivores on Bonaire. Some of them have sound ecological background to them, such as herbivore exclosures or enforcement of the policy stating that goats must be kept within a fenced farm (or “Kunuku”). Some are convoluted and ridiculous, but must be so to keep the tourists’ money happy, like the plan to catch all of the donkeys on the island, keep the females and foals in the donkey sanctuary, then sterilise and reintroduce all the males. There is another option, of which the CIA are strong supporters, violent deposing of those you are against. When it comes to the pigs on the island, there seems to be very little room for negotiations. No-one claims ownership of the animals, and they continue to decimate any chance the forest has for regeneration, and you certainly don’t see the tourist clamouring to set up a pig sanctuary. There is also next to no meat produced on the island and the sale of pork would bolster the conservation camps’ coffers. Although Echo is not involved in eradication projects it is an extracurricular opportunity that volunteers are afforded...

And with the snap of a twig, there is a pause and a glance from the pigs, and just like that, there is the scent of violence at the edge of a forest clearing.