David Glick - 50 Ways to F**k the Planet

As long as governments pontificate on taking varroa seriously, there is only one winner. According to the Cardiff-based International Bee Research Unit, the one hope involves the genetic breeding of a new generation of honeybees, with jaws strong enough to yank the mites off their bodies. ‘With what funding?’ you may snigger. Evolution is all out of time.

There was a time when the distant hum of the honeybee was as sure a signal of summer’s onset as traffic jams on the M5. These days you can enjoy your picnics and beer gardens free from their monotonous droning. While you sup your Guinness, varroa does the dirty work. Once, their sting was a childhood rite of passage, but now you can save yourself the trip to the pharmacy.

* Mysterious disease suddenly eradicates varroa parasite. Honeybee saved at the final hour. Unlikely.

* Miracle cure for varroa discovered by maverick oddball scientist. Slim possibility.

* Pioneering breakthrough discovers natural alternative to the wild honeybee’s pollinating prowess. Yeah, right.

* The value of the honeybee is belatedly recognized by the government. Generous funding to protect the species is immediate. Unforeseeable.

* Varroa runs riot. Hawaii finally succumbs in late 2012. Three years later, remaining bee farms inside high-security sealed factories are infiltrated. Anticipated.

Likelihood that wild honeybee is extinct by 2020: 72%

Fins ain’t what they used to be

* Upset the natural order of the seas

* Stake out the salmon

* Free the finned-ones

* Interbreed and weaken the species

When it comes to wanton ecocide, it’s sometimes good just to lay a marker, to show the world who’s boss. And there are few better species with which to demonstrate your superiority in all matters ecocidal than one so finely developed as the wild salmon. Until now, these marvels of evolution have always allowed instinct to guide them thousands of miles across open waters in a current-defying voyage to their spawning grounds. But survival of the fittest? Pah! At last, man has perfected the means to subvert the natural order.

The first step was to fish wild Atlantic salmon practically to the point of exhaustion; the second to begin farming replacement fish. And therein lay the evil genius of the plan, the ‘extinction vortex’. The new man-reared specimens were inferior in all ways but one – they had what it took to destroy their wild friends. Covertly released with the excuse of having ‘escaped’ from farms, their mission was twofold: to breed with their genetically superior wild cousins, and then to infect them with disease. Talk about eliminating the competition. The torpedo-like physique of wild salmon – in some ways the SAS of the aquamarine world – became weakened by intermingling with the flabby farmed types, the genetic equivalent of a couch potato with fins, and the salmon’s instinctive ability to survive in the wild was shot. No longer could it make its trans-Atlantic migration back home. It was fin-ished.

Under cover of darkness, the men bobbed towards the vast sea cages. As their dinghy pulled alongside the expanse of steel mesh, the balaclava-wearing figures on board grimaced at the writhing coil of bodies. At a silent signal, they began to hack at the cages with steel-cutters. That September night, 15,000 halibut were liberated from their underwater prison at Kames Marine Fish Farm, Oban, off the west coast of Scotland. It was a textbook ‘release’. Police were left floundering with but a single clue: the letters ALF daubed on a nearby wall. No one was ever caught.

In many respects, the Animal Liberation Front represent everything you probably can’t be bothered with. Their abiding philosophy is, after all, to draw attention to and to condemn ‘speciesism’, an assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals. Yet these are emancipated times; tribal loyalties and prejudices have no place in the quest to deliver environmental catastrophe. To satisfy such lofty ambitions, you must adopt the same methods, if under quite a different agenda. The guiding principles of the ALF are to ‘liberate animals from places of abuse’, such as fish farms, and to ‘inflict economic sabotage’ on those who profit from caging creatures. These two tenets fit nicely with your task to mass-release farmed salmon into the oceans of the world.

Establishing contact with militant wings of the ALF is challenging, but surmountable so long as you do not make the mistake of explaining that your real motive is to rid the seas of wild salmon, dress head to toe in khaki, and take out a subscription to the Socialist Worker. The actual act of liberation is no doubt a more important concern to animal activists than the genetic carnage they unleash upon the world in setting free caged animals. Despite this, it is best to err on the safe side and keep the master plan secret for as long as possible.

The ALF is a loose network of autonomous cells and in order to meet like-minded members you will need to join demonstrations against animal-research centres, trawl internet message boards or subscribe to its newsletter. But rest assured, the ALF are out there, with the organization describing its members as including ‘PTA parents, church volunteers, your spouse, your neighbour or your mayor’. High-profile members are usually under police surveillance and officers typically video demonstrators at protests. A new face might attract unwanted attention. Also, do be prepared for the possibility that even ALF sympathizers may refuse to sabotage fish farms. If this is the case, don’t just give up. Seek out the Animal Rights Militia (ARM) or the Justice Department, who believe that direct action is the way to go. If these two underground over-the-top movements prove too elusive, try the Lobster Liberation Front, which has already attacked fishing interests with varying success and might be persuaded to broaden its target base. Certainly, there should be enough activists around who possess the necessary zeal and wile to successfully liberate fish. After all, past attacks have proved that activists have the determination to navigate freezing waters at night, the strength to cut through heavy netting and the guile to evade security.

Enticing possible recruits will rely on propagating several set arguments. Make sure you encourage rumours that farmed salmon are being obscenely crammed into cages and force-fed processed proteins by machine. Don’t forget to mention the colourings and antibiotics which are prophylactically tipped into cages. Refer to caged fish as ‘the battery chickens of the sea’. Animal activists will be unable to resist such bait. If more persuasion is required, refer to a past Scottish Executive salmon report which reveals that farmed salmon are recognizable from their small heads, deformed bodies, and diseased gill covers. If this fails, concoct a story about how they are electrocuted with prods if they don’t finish their tea.

Once you have netted recruits to your new splinter cell, Operation Bite Back IV can get underway. Farms holding halibut and cod are all well and good, but the best objective is to disable the eighteen vast salmon farms dotted along the Irish and Scottish coasts. Further afield, the ALF’s international network can concentrate on targeting the massive fish farms of Norway, home to the world’s biggest salmon-farming industry. This is where the blueprint for large-scale salmon releases was written. Among a series of triumphant attacks on fish farms was the release of a hundred thousand salmon from a major facility in northern Norway, in the course of which activists slashed seventy thick nylon ropes. Comfortingly, some Norwegian streams are already populated entirely by descendants of farmed fish, fragile creatures whose presence is sustained only by the continual release of domesticated specimens. If you are forced to operate domestically, bear in mind that farmed salmon released from a Scottish fish farm can make the journey for you, swimming the distance and unleashing widespread genetic havoc in Norway itself. Most second-generation hybrids die in the first few weeks as a result of genetic incompatibilities, but researchers have found Scottish escapees flapping their fat forms all the way to Scandinavia.