Beetlemania

This is my Original Oratory (OO)/Persuasive speech for Speech and Debate in 2009-2010.

            Stepping into a young girl’s room, you see walls plastered in posters of cuddly polar bears, playfully pawing at one another in the icy snow. Scattered across the floor and bed - stuffed animals. A single one catches your eye – a huggable panda bear lazily chewing on a leafy bamboo spout. The covers on the bed depict a scene of penguins, swiftly sliding down snowy hills on their round stomachs into the freezing waters below. These adorable animals seem so sweet and lovable. Walking into her big brother’s room, you look around and take in the details. His computer desktop – fierce Siberian tigers, clawing at one another. Several posters – a pack of African wild dogs, foaming at the mouth ready to pounce upon their prey and Javan rhinoceros, charging at one another with their horns, engaged in a full on battle. And sitting upon his desk, a ceramic figurine of a Komodo dragon, whose stare causes a shiver to go through your body.  But… what’s that… in the corner? Dung beetles?!... scurrying around in a putrid pile of poo? Some respect goes to the tough predators, but the image of the dung beetles creeping and crawling around in the filthy feces plain out disgusts the viewer.

            Walking away from these rooms, you realize that these all share the status of endangered animal species. While we are all familiar with the cuddly polar bear as an endangered animal species or the fierce yet beautiful Siberian tiger, when was the last time you saw a young child blissfully embracing a stuffed dung beetle? The adorable animals fill the media, with countless stories and ads calling for prompt protection, yet not a single story goes to the seemingly less significant animal species. People don’t want to acknowledge that there are important creatures to our environment that aren’t too cute or even heroic. The miniscule dung beetles’ population, along with the other not so “cute” animals, swiftly dwindles and soon they may become extinct, resulting in a loss of important environmental assets.

            WARNING: The following information may not be appropriate for people of all ages. … But… the truth must be told; hopefully it doesn’t bug you. The rapid extinction of the dung beetles would have an enormous impact as these insects are found all around the world, except the Polar Regions. They consume Steaming Heaps of Intestinal Throughput… more commonly known as S.H.I.T. Imagine a world without dung beetles; everywhere you step, piles of dung, also known as S.H.I.T. -step- Eww! -step- Gross! -step- Again?! Dung beetles benefit agriculture in a variety of ways. They bury and consume livestock feces and, according to Bioscience Press Releases, billions of dollars of economic losses were averted annually as a result of livestock feces buried by dung beetles (Losey and Vaughan, 2). It also reports that the complete lack of the dung beetles would result in forage fouling, an excess amount of dung left in the open, by the unburied dung causing about 7.63 kg of beef per cattle to go to waste every year (Losey and Vaughan, 3). This is unhealthy for the cattle and results in poor quality beef that cannot be used, sold, or eaten. This decrease in the abundance of beef increases its cost. Imagine walking into a McDonalds and ordering a cheeseburger. -click- -click- -click- That will be $39.65 for your cheeseburger, please. And you think our economy is bad now! Also, had the dung been left out in the open, it would provide a home for flies and other pests (Losey and Vaughan, 4).

            As people hear about these possible and likely losses, they are aware of the drastic damage that can occur, yet the injustice continues. This is mainly due to the politics behind media advertisement. The public wants to see the cuter animals, thus the media covers animals such as pandas and penguins rather than those like beetles. A majority of the public does not even realize that some of these species are endangered. They do not receive enough notification on these topics and base their perspective off of what they do know; bugs multiply rapidly, so beetles must be abundant, right? This mentality is false, however, as these beetles originally have a short lifespan, which is even shorter due to frequent logging, forest fires, predators, as well as humans’ tendency to squish bugs they see. Eww! A bug! Squish it! Hurry! … You know who you are. This results in not enough time for the adults to reproduce as well as diminishing the adult population itself. Still, not much is done about keeping these animal species safe or nursing back their population, for nobody hears of their decline and near extinction as no one informs them about it. The media continuously portrays those adorable animals and their cry for help while the cries of the more important animal species are drowned out as nothing but an insignificant, muffled whimper. Consequently, public donors often donate to organizations to help publicized animals such as the polar bears, while the unheard voices of those like the beetles continue praying for help to no avail. A single organization, the 2009 Rochester Polar Plunge, alone has raised over $12,000 for polar bears, with the top contribution of over $4500 from a single donor, while organizations such as this one are rarely found for animals like the dung beetle (2009 Polar Plunge, 1). What’s wrong with the Society of Poo-eating Dung Beetles?

            In order to put an end to this ignorance, additional media on the more important animals is required to make the public aware of their tragic situations. More news articles and other media coverage will help educate the naïve society and thus plant a seed of awareness, starting a chain reaction toward keeping these vital assets to our environment alive so that no one will poo-poo the importance of the dung beetles. The second step is to establish services to protect these animals. In order to do so, we need to further develop additional government funding for animal preserves and sanctuaries, specifying on animals such as the dung beetles. This is not an unachievable goal since several of these preserves are already available for those like the polar bears. Why not for the dung beetles? … unless you want Steaming Heaps of Intestinal Throughput everywhere… but personally… no thanks. This would make the public more aware of these vital endangered species, causing people to be more willing to vote for additional funding to take care of these animals. This would solve the dilemma of unequal media coverage and government funding would follow suit. In a safe, controlled environment, these endangered species could thrive and begin to breed. Their offspring could be released into the wild and their legacy would thus continue… hopefully not to the point of world domination.  After a while, animals like the dung beetles could be taken off the endangered species list. Our environmental assets would not be lost and nature and the economy could be maintained and even flourish further.

            The government must step in to fund additional publicity on endangered animals that are crucial for the ecosystem as well as animal preserves and sanctuaries to shelter them. As Henry David Thoreau wisely noted, “Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain” (Quotes on Nature, 1). We, as citizens, need to take action and care for the environment that makes up our world. Though we do not always take the time to think about these animals or their interaction with our own lives, their daily routines affect our ecosystems’ health and prosperity as well as our economy. Taking a closer look at what these animals truly do for our society, as well as the danger that their species is in, will result in a greater number of people ready be proactive to reform the ways of the media and their own perspectives. It is much harder to find information about issues unless the media brings it to our attention. But once people are finally aware of what is happening to these beetles and the drastic outcomes that could occur to not only nature, but people as well, they will be willing to make a difference. So the next time you are about to step on a beetle, stop … pick it up … bring it home … and let it clean up that present Scruffy just left behind.