It may sound like a riddle, but judging the value of a Mediterranean or Hawaiian monk seal could well represent the difference between survival and extinction. Perhaps inescapably, human attitudes towards any wild animal and its habitat are governed by a comparative estimation of value, be that of an economic or more spiritual variety.

And like it or not, all other issues affecting Monachus are subsidiary to this one. That much is evident even in flicking casually through this issue of The Monachus Guardian. Consider, for example, the struggle between tourism and conservation interests in Turkey, or the Hawaiian fisheries policy that appears to be compromising the future survival of Monachus schauinslandi. Attempts to rationalise such issues often owe more to sophistry than to scientific fact. Turkish investors pretend that monk seals and beach crowds can peacefully coexist, while the NMFS turns a Nelsonian eye to the fisheries crisis in the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge.

The results of such ‘animal value’ equations are unambiguous enough. The monk seal will come in a poor runner-up to fishing interests and property speculators.

It is beyond this point, however, that the waters become increasingly murky. Subjective attitudes and estimations of value colour the entire land and seascape of human interactions with monk seals. When scientific curiosity or career advancement are at stake, how does one weigh objectively the benefits of data collection versus the disturbance imposed upon target animals? When translocation or captive breeding becomes the name of the game, how can we be sure that selfish motives are not intruding upon the decision-making process? When certain official agencies are appointed to oversee international coordination and information exchange, how can we be sure that the vacuous bureaucracy is due to incompetence rather than some kind of institutionalised mechanism to slow the pace of change? And on far-flung Midway Atoll, how can we be convinced that ecotourism will benefit the monk seal rather than the commercial interests promoting the venture?

Thankfully, you may say, monk seals have at least escaped the attentions of the so-called ‘wise users’, who tend to portray animal and habitat exploitation as a kind of humanitarian venture. Their logic, of course (rather like the Pope’s – allegedly infallible), is that conservation can only succeed if it appeals to human self-interest. Without doubt, there are certain Darwinian merits to that point of view, despite the tiresome role of greed as all-too-deadly sin. For evidence, look no further than the proponents of this self-styled philosophy, who tend to reserve subsistence sustainability for those less fortunate than themselves.

Not that monk seals paying for their own conservation is an entirely new idea.

In a 1962 report to IUCN (now also known by its alias, the World Conservation Union), Dr. A. van Wijngaarden recommended that the venerable institution: "point out to governments that Monk Seals are an important but now only a potential natural resource. Managed properly the seal could become a permanent source of skins, meat and oil" (Wijngaarden 1962).

We have already seen how dead monk seals have become a thriving little business in sustainable exploitation for the inhabitants of Cala Gonone in Sardinia (Monk Seal Myths in Sardinia). But is it possible that the ‘wise use’ of living seals has also crept in through the back door, wearing a disguise? True, there may not be monk seals enough to harvest for skins, meat and oil so that the species may at last fulfil its useful, IUCN-appointed destiny. There are, however, different forms of exploitation.

It is at this point that there is no alternative but to ask whether the beneficiaries of certain costly monk seal projects are really monk seals at all. If translocation experiments are not benefiting monk seals, for example, then who might we find on the receiving line? If the intergovernmental bureaucracy is not aiding the species, then who is it serving? If the multi-million dollar plan to establish Hawaiian monk seal captive breeding does nothing more than produce frozen sperm and a few psychotic zoo animals, who precisely is reaping the windfall?

All of which brings us back to priorities and the value that human society places on the survival of the monk seal. Funding agencies will place their bets on high-tech experiments like drunken punters at the Grand National, but will sober up in seconds when asked to fork out for guards and patrol boats. Money is showered on international conferences at the most exotic locations, but frontline projects continue to live from hand to mouth. Without blinking an eye, corporations in the mass tourism industry invest tens of millions of dollars on a single development, but when asked to donate funds towards the species they are chasing into oblivion, will offer little more than a pre-printed letter of apology, pleading hard times.

At which point, an old saying springs to mind. Something about people who know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

William M. Johnson, 1 May 1999