When someone describes their ideal world as "one of anarchy" images of Sid Vicious - pistols and punks in tow - creating chaos in pubs throughout the UK, come to mind. But when that person is entrepreneur-extraordinaire, Roger Beattie, the statement takes on a different beat, where anarchy allows for libertarian views to blend with eco lifestyles and big business in a surprisingly sensible, natural and profitable way.The rest of the article goes through his adventures in the Chathams and his fights with DoC: Beattie wants to save endangered weka by farming them for meat; DoC prefers they go extinct rather than be eaten. Hopefully, somebody will take a stick to DoC sometime soon to help them in getting their minds right.
Beattie is a fairly well known figure in farming, fishing and conservation circles. His anarchic approach to life and business has certainly contributed to that, but it's his continued achievements with offbeat ventures that have placed him at the forefront of numerous industries.
I've posted the article to Scribd; it's also embedded below. It's probably easiest to open the file in a separate window.
Roger Beattie Eco Anarchist
Apparently the only place you can eat buff weka is on the Chathams, where they're so plentiful they're a pest - so it appears that DOC isn't adverse to eating them in principle. Hopefully they'll change the status of the buff weka on the mainland so that once Beattie has got a breeding population up and going we can eat them too. Mmmmm TurDuckka anyone? What sort of status is 'protected but extinct' anyway?
ReplyDeleteMakes me wonder what they taste like. I'd think wild ones would be quite gamey and stringy, but farmed Weka would probably be more palatable. I remember them being akin to a pest on the West Coast when I was a lad, it seems reasonable to allow limited commercial harvesting in areas where they are plentiful.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I have always been curious about wombats too, they seem like they might be quite nice meaty beasties. I'm guessing the various species also enjoy protected status in Australia, but commercially grown wombat might be quite popular as a gourmet meat...