Jordan Zakarin

You don’t seem to be that impressed by nature.

You see, I am. It’s just that sometimes, I just question it. I love nature, it’s probably my most favorite thing. I don’t watch much telly, the telly hardly goes on, but the things I do watch are sort of nature programs, and something about the oceans and the amount of weird fish that’s in there. But all I’m doing is questioning it sometimes, because people make a lot of fuss over animals. And it’s just all this stuff, things going extinct or whatever. I just sort of say, what does it matter? We’ll all die out eventually. Humans will be gone. And all I’m saying is, when people worry about polar bears disappearing or whatever, it’s like well that’s life, things will come and go, well we’ll find new species… 

The dodo went, it died out, nothing’s changed, we’ve just carried on. But we’ve gotten to the point that we want to save everything. The population is going up, we save every animal — things are meant to die out. If dinosaurs were wandering about now, we’d be saving them. If something dies out, it dies for a reason. The wooly mammoth, we’re not responsible for that, yet people are saying it’s our fault that all these things are dying out. No, everything has a life span. I’m just saying, I love all the animal stuff, but I’m also aware that things aren’t meant to last forever. But honestly, if there was a job opportunity coming up, in terms of what I’d want to do a program on, nature is the thing I’d love to do, it’s just that I’m not qualified enough.

So you’d want to do a naturalist program?

I wanted to do something ages ago, we did it on the radio show. It’s called “Do We Need Them?” What I’d do is I’d go through all the species that exist and just say, right, i we take that off the planet? What effect would it have? It’s just like bees. People say if bees die out, the world would end apparently. Now, I don’t know if that’s true, if that’s some bee enthusiast who managed to write a good document and people believe this. I read the other day that bees have started to work in airports, they teach them to sniff out bombs. Yeah, they’ve taught them, instead of having sniffer dogs all the time, they’ve got bees working in airports. I havent’ seen it physically happen, but they can sniff out a bomb. I don’t know if that’s true, but everything’s evolving. Things are changing. Animals are dying out, but some are also changing. You’ve got dogs doing more jobs than they ever had in their lives now. When you’ve got bees doing jobs, who’d have thought that would have happen? 

So maybe in the program, I’d look at, I’d go are bees needed to keep the planet going? If so, why are they doing that job? What’s that animal doing, what’s the panda doing? Everyone’s panicking about the panda dying out, but what’s a panda doing? Every time I see a panda, it’s on its ass doing nothing. It’s not like it’s having kids. Well leave him! What would happen without the panda? That’s all I’m saying. It’s just looking at nature, it is amazing, but what’s it all doing? Do we need everything that’s on here? And I’m not saying the human race is any better than the animal kingdom. I keep getting leaflets through the door, flamingos are getting caught up in carrier bug sor something, turtles are choking. It’s always animals that need help!

Would the world be okay without flamingoes and turtles?

Flamingoes, my life wouldn’t change, we don’t have flamingoes in London, to me it’s like they’re extinct, I never see one. And when I do see one, they seem to be standing there with one leg in the air, they’re not moving much, they’re like an ornament. I’m sure they have some job, but what would happen if we took them out of the system? That’s all I’m saying. I don’t think it’ll get commissioned, I don’t think I’ll get the program, but it’s just an idea.