The obvious way of tackling a problem very seldom turns out to have been the right way. It is true that the human mind does respond to facts and figures, but it needs more than bald statements to stimulate the imagination and to generate an emotional response.

The conservation of the huge, unique and very important wetland environment of the Pantanal is a problem on a grand scale. It is a problem created by the immense powers that technology has put anto the hands of legislators, planners and engineers. It has now become possible for the wetlands of the Pantanal to be converted to some other purpose, perhaps more directly beneficial to the Brazilian and Bolivian national economies, but what would be the price in terms of the degradation of nature and the extermination of wild species of plants and animals?

Perhaps Fifo Stricker has hit upon a solution. Use technology to replace the living species. The idea is patently grotesque, but it may help to convince even the most ardent technologists that the idea of destroying the nature of the Pantanal is even more grotesque.

His royal highness, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh