Once upon a time, there was a beautiful kingdom known as Nodelac. It had a benevolent Queen and an honest Governor and it thrived and prospered. It grew from a little milling village into a sizeable town over the years and the people were happy.

Of course it takes many materials to build a town, and so the people sawed and dug and ploughed and sewed while still protecting their wild green spaces. One year though, the people looked at a great hole in the ground that they had dug and said, “Hmmm.  This is a mess! We will have to clean this up!”

So the Queen and the Governor summoned the Nature Guard to supervise the clean-up and certify that the hole in the ground was rehabilitated. So it was written, so it was done! Over the years the hole in the ground became a beautiful lake surrounded by green fields filled with life – flying, fluttering, crawling, hopping, slithering and loping creatures of all shapes and sizes!  And the people called It their Wildlife Sanctuary.

Over time, the Queen passed on and was replaced by a King who liked holes in the ground more than wildlife sanctuaries. The King then gave new powers to the Governors under his “Ruthless Governor’s Law”  This new law, and a lot of bags of gold from the King and his wealthy Barons, made a few of the Governors also begin to love holes in the ground more than wildlife sanctuaries. Some of the Governors refused to follow the new law and maintained the peoples’ voice in their towns. But many gave in to power and greed.

Sadly, the Governor of Nodelac was seduced by these new powers and by large bags of gold from a wealthy land Baron who looked at their beautiful Wildlife Sanctuary as a chance to horde even more gold. The Baron bought the land surrounding the Wildlife Sanctuary! Then he convinced the Governor that if he got permission to fill in that “old hole” he could build an unaffordable new community on the ugly flattened landscape.

Although many of Nodelac’s people and elders opposed the destruction of their beautiful Wildlife Sanctuary, the Governor set in motion a series of edicts to let the Land Baron quickly get ready to fill in the beautiful lake in the middle of their Wildlife Sanctuary. The people were angry, the elders were angry, and all the little creatures were scared.

“We must do something,” they cried. “We must let all the citizens of Nodelac know that this Ruthless Governor is violating the Queen’s edict that our Wildlife Sanctuary is royally certified and protected. We cannot let the Land Baron buy our future!”

The people then exposed the corruption and draconian decisions that perverted the voice and rights of the citizens of Nodelac They rose up and deposed the Governor, shamed the betrayers out of town, banished the land Baron, and shortly thereafter toppled the King.

And the good people of Nodelac and their Wildlife Sanctuary lived happily ever after.

*****

Now, dear Readers, imagine that this is happening right in our own backyard. What would you do to save our Wildlife Sanctuary? As Robert Bateman once said to me, “Skid, we never save anything by moaning and groaning about them once they’re gone. We save things by celebrating the beauty of their existence while we still have them.”

Wise words by which to live and act.

The way I see it.

***

Footnote: The exact location of the mythical Kingdom of Nodelac is uncertain. The Gaulish colonists who first displaced the indigenous peoples called it Nord du Lac.The second wave of Anglo-Saxon colonists blended the name to Nodelac.