Saving the penguins

Problems with penguins bring the Falkland Islands leaping back to the rest of the world's attention, because the comical birds are generally seen as the remote archipelago's only truly international asset. The mysterious death of thousands of them, which is puzzling scientists, thereby carries additional weight. It is as if a malaise had struck the symbolic apes of Gibraltar, or the ravens whose nesting in the Tower of London guarantees the capital's safety. This is a less risky strategy than may at first appear. Prudent people do not mind putting all their eggs in one basket if the wickerwork is safe. The past colonial governors of Gib and the Tower wardens had reason to believe that their apes and birds would stay with them, and they have been proved right. To link the creatures' presence with their own authority saved a great deal of legal paperwork and political debate.

The penguins of the Falklands will benefit in a different way, because their symbolic importance has mobilised world concern, in a way which would not apply had disease broken out among storm petrels. But there are victims in this concentration of virtues in just one representative from the natural world. Who will answer the alarm bells, for instance, should trouble hit the Falklands' krill shellfish (economically far more important than the penguins)? Or if blight wilts that tough flower of the island, the diddle-dee?

The answer is to borrow one of the United States's good examples, as opposed to the more dubious habits which have crossed the Atlantic eastward, and that is the practice of adopting at least six interesting things as officially representative of a state. Minnesota, for instance, has a mushroom, a fish, a flower, a tree and even a muffin (blueberry - see 1988 Minn Laws Ch 657 Sect 1). Its state bird, the common loon, also has six deputies including the pileated woodpecker, if ecological disaster strikes. The Falklands should take note.