Slow and Steady Wins the Race

I've been a fan of turtles ever since I can remember. As a kid I loved Dr. Seuss' "Yertle the Turtle," and loved it even more many years later when I found out that it may have in fact been a commentary against Hitler and fascism (the story includes the famous ending, "And the turtles, of course . . . all turtles are free. As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.").

Not surprisingly, our shelled friends' major adversary these days is . . . us. According to the New York Times:

". . . herpetologists fear that in humans the stalwart survivors from the Mesozoic era may at last have met their mortician. Turtle habitats are fast disappearing, or are being fragmented and transected by roads on which millions of turtles are crushed each year. 'There’s no defense against that predator known as the automobile,' Dr. Gibbons said. Researchers estimate that at least half of all turtle species are in serious trouble, and that some of them, like the Galapagos tortoise, the North American bog turtle, the Pacific leatherback sea turtle and more than a dozen species in China and Southeast Asia, may effectively go extinct in the next decade if extreme measures are not taken. 'People love turtles, people find them endearing, but people take turtles for granted,' Mr. Cover said. “They have no idea how important turtles are to the ecosystems in which they, and we, live.'"

The turtle, like the four pillars of the Green Party, will endure. Slow and steady wins the race.