Friday, 24 November 2017

Post 478 - Celebs champion & celebrate nature rather than distress, disrespect and devalue it.

You're a celebrity so step up and get some respect for nature!

I'm fed up of the 'celebrity' programme. I've never liked it. Why is it that a 'celebrity' gets attention for eating insects, for having to crawl through a box of frogs and spiders and making people think nature is something to be scared of and feared?

I say celebrity. I really don't know who most of the people that go on this programme are! And just to say I never watch it, I get fed up enough of the headlines everywhere, watching the show would only make me more annoyed.

To me a celebrity should be a role model, someone to respect, someone who inspires people and uses their position to make a difference. I wrote about this a while back in Post 378 - and I mentioned the sorts of celebrities that I admire like Chris Packham, Bill Bailey, Bill Oddie. Of course Sir David Attenbrough should have been in that post too. These are people who are trying to get people to care about the environment. There are any more of course but sadly the people that end up on the celeb programme take the money and just perpetuate an image of nature that is wrong. It should not be exploited for entertainment or popularity.

It was actually tweets from Bill Oddie and Chris Packham that reminded me about my earlier blog and inspired me to write this post.

I've felt this way for a while and I've tried to spread the message a little. I rediscovered my Rant for Change video which must be two or three years old now. I've included it at the end if you want to see it.

Why can't more celebrities promote and help nature?

Wouldn't you rather see celebs doing good? Promoting and helping nature? I want to see these people doing beach cleans, to save our marine wildlife from getting caught in and eating harmful plastics - plastics that we end up eating. How about helping hedgehogs and other declining species? Maybe Ant and Dec could volunteer at a nature reserve?

What about helping insects rather than eating them - studies show we've lost three quarters of our insects in the last 25 years!  If we lose the insects then our entire ecological system is at risk of collapse! Don`t they know that our insects are our main pollinators of plants, and food source for birds, reptiles and small mammals?

Try doing some fundraising for wildlife. I think that would impress people much more than poncing around the jungle abusing nature. I'm sure the people eating the meal worms, cockroaches and spiders aren't enjoying it, but I bet the insects like it a lot less even if they are being eaten by a 'celebrity'.

So I decided to start a Thunderclap to try and show that other people feel the same. You can sign up here:

I hope I've timed it right for the final of the show so that lots of people will see that it's not right to exploit nature like this, that it's not right to send a message that nature is scary.

While I was promoting the Thunderclap the RSPCA were kind enough to respond to one of my tweets. They gave some really good advice about some other things that you can do about the way this programme treats wildlife - I've included the tweet below but basically complain to ITV viewer services and Ofcom (link to how to contact them). I noticed when looking at this that I'm a Celebrity had had a few complaints over the last week but we probably need to send them a lot more to get this to change.


Only problem about this though that I can see is that I'd have to watch the programme to be able to make a complaint rather than just be campaigning about the principle of using and eating wildlife for entertainment :-(

Nature is to be treasured. Nature supports us all. Nature is suffering and needs our support more than ever!

Hope you agree,

Z.


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