Switch - Chip Heath [61]
Enter an unlikely savior: college student Paul Butler. In 1977, Butler was finishing his last year of studies at North-East London Polytechnic. Butler’s passion was conservation, and he’d previously spent five weeks completing a field research expedition in St. Lucia, where he’d studied the parrot and submitted recommendations for preserving the species.
Just before graduation—“with unemployment staring me in the face,” said Butler—he received a letter from the head of St. Lucia’s forestry department. To Butler’s astonishment, he was offered a job. Impressed with Butler’s recommendations, the head of forestry asked if Butler was interested in returning for six months as the department’s conservation adviser. The job paid $200 a month, and Butler could stay in a government “rest hut.” Butler could barely believe his luck. He was 21 years old, and the government of a beautiful Caribbean island was asking for his help in saving an endangered species.
Butler’s recommendations to the government had been straightforward: (1) Beef up the punishment for capturing or killing the parrot, from a trivial fine to an enormous fine plus a jail term. (2) Establish within an existing forestry reserve a “parrot sanctuary” that would protect the parrot’s habitat. (3) Raise money for the operation of the reserve by licensing “rain-forest tours,” which would offer tourists the chance to see the reserve and its star attraction.
A quick time-out: Notice that these recommendations—changing laws, enforcing new penalties—are exactly the sorts of things that we shy away from in this book, because most of us don’t have those tools in our kit. But here’s the thing: Butler didn’t have those tools, either. And neither did the forestry service. For Butler’s recommendations to be put into practice, the island’s laws would need to change, which meant, in turn, that the public would have to get behind the initiative. So Butler, fresh out of college, working with the forestry department, and armed with a budget in the hundreds of dollars, had to figure out a way to rally the people of St. Lucia behind a parrot that most of them took for granted (and some of them ate).
There was no clear economic case for saving the parrot. It wasn’t the linchpin of an ecosystem, and the sad truth was that most St. Lucians probably wouldn’t notice if it disappeared completely. Butler knew he couldn’t make an analytical case for protecting the bird. He’d have to make an emotional case.
In essence, Butler’s goal was to convince St. Lucians that they were the kind of people who protected their own. In public events, Butler stressed, “This parrot is ours. Nobody has this but us. We need to cherish it and look after it.” He did everything in his power to make the public more familiar with the bird. He hosted St. Lucia Parrot puppet shows, distributed T-shirts, cajoled a local band to record songs about the bird, convinced local hotels to print up bumper stickers, recruited volunteers to dress up in parrot costumes and visit local schools, and asked local ministers to cite relevant Bible verses (for instance, verses that instructed believers to be good stewards of the things that were in their trust). He even talked a telecom company into printing up St. Lucia Parrot calling cards. On one card, the parrot was displayed next to the bald eagle, which was like putting Selma Hayek next to Dick Cheney. It was clear who had the better-looking national bird.
The St. Lucians began to embrace their parrot, as though it had always been a part of their national identity. Polls commissioned by Butler showed a dramatic rise in public support for the bird. The wave of public support made it possible to pass into law the recommendations that Butler and the forestry department, headed up by Gabriel Charles, had proposed.
As the years passed, the species came back from the brink. At last count, there were between six hundred and seven hundred parrots—an astonishing increase for a species that had been