Today Is...Endangered Species Day

Our Royal family are not the sharpest knives in the drawer at the best of times but even they must have realised that stopping off to go hunting on the way to launching a campaign aimed at saving wildlife was not the best move.
William and Harry (before Harry was exiled from the Royals) fronted a campaign called 'Let's Unite for Wildlife!' but animals don't need enemies with idiots like the Royal Chuckle Brothers protecting them, keen to prove their caring sharing side for wildlife by bravely blasting huge holes in them from a safe distance as all hunters do.
I've always thought that if you want to kill an animal, you should not use a high powered rifle from a safe distance, you should go cavemen and kill it with your bare hands. Gives the animal a fighting chance and see if you can take out the scary beast with a few kicks and well placed uppercuts and may the best man/tiger win.
One Australian MP, when criticised for culling Camels in the outback from a helicopter said that: 'To be shot from a helicopter is actually quite humane. If I was a camel, I'd prefer to just get it in the head' but i would wager if he was a camel he would prefer not to be shot through the head at all. I'd even say it was a fair bet that he would prefer to be left alone and not have some beered up Aussie trying to mow him down from the safety of a helicopter.
Steve Irwin, who was always up for a scrap with anything as long as it was deadly, would be disappointed in the lot of you down there.
Hunting has contributed to the extinction and near extinction of countless animal species all over the world with almost 16,000 mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish on the endangered list of threatened species and many more hunted out of existence.
The journal Biological Conservation says insects could also vanish within a century at the current rate of decline and the heavy use of pesticides, urbanisation and climate change are significant factors.
'The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems' according to the review with over 40% of insect species in decline and a third endangered.
My first reaction is to say good, bloody insects but reading on it explains the implications for humans as insects are 'essential for the proper functioning of all ecosystems and that 'we humans cannot survive without insects'.
So maybe i was a bit hasty in cheering and ushering in the demise of insects, an insect free sit in the park in summer is quite lightweight compared to the continued survival of the human race.    
With that in mind i am willing to make a compromise and accept that we need some insects but Crane Flies can sod off as can mosquitoes, earwigs, woodlice, horse flies and midges and we could do without flies and the World (and picnics) would be a much better place without hornets and wasps and i am even willing to allow spiders to continue being if my milk-bottle white arms and legs remain free of bitey, stingy things this summer.