animals
April 26, 2024

On the road in the Arctic: Hannes Jaenicke fights for the polar bears

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Hannes Jaenicke, since Knut the Germans have a close relationship to polar bears. It's her too - and yet a little different.

Hannes Jaenicke: We experienced Knut in his enclosure in the Berlin Zoo as a waving court jester, who has little to do with the majestic predator from the Arctic. The polar bear is fighting for survival: there are only about 23,000 specimens left on our planet? Tendency falling.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: What's upset for the polar bear?

Hannes Jaenicke: The hope for the polar bears is sinking with rising temperatures. Our energy consumption and the associated climate change heat the animals away the livelihood under the paws. Year after year, the arctic ice sheets disappear faster and more definitively. And with it the hunting grounds and nurseries of polar bears.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: And we humans ...

Hannes Jaenicke: ... do the rest. Polar bears are still being hunted, their habitat is polluted, occupied by humans and exploited. As the last link in the Arctic food chain, environmental toxins also threaten the existence of polar bears. We report about it in the movie? amongst other things.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: This film is the second one after their orangutan mission to protect endangered species. Where does your engagement come from?

Hannes Jaenicke: Something like this from 1974 - there I was 14 - I've heard that there is Greenpeace - and above all, what Greenpeace does. How the guys with their dinghies tackled whalers I found cool. These were modern cowboys. At 16, I joined them. I quickly realized that non-governmental organizations like Greenpeace do more than politics.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: How that?

Hannes Jaenicke: They are more independent than politics and the associated lobbyism. They try to implement what science has long known and largely ignored industry and politics. The Club of Rome has already propagated in 1971 that we have to get out of fossil fuels.

There are only about 23,000 polar bears left in the world - and the trend is falling

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: We still use gasoline today.

Hannes Jaenicke: Right. And a woman who calls herself "climate chancellor" still has coal-fired power plants built today. With the eternal mace of jobs and cheap energy. Instead of creating jobs in the regenerative sector. I find that irresponsible.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: How did the films about endangered species come about?

Hannes Jaenicke: I made travel programs for the station Vox a couple of years ago. One took me to Canada, and there we filmed orcas. At that time, a Canadian naval member told me that dead orcas are disposed of in toxic waste landfills. Those are highly contaminated with PCBs and other toxins and only reach half of their actual life expectancy of 70 years, the infant mortality increased in a short time fourfold. These aspects I had in the movie, but in the end cut only cute Free Willys were seen. That annoyed me pretty much. That's when I started developing this format.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: What did you learn by yourself?

Hannes Jaenicke: I did not know that the habitats of the orangutans for teak wood are being destroyed, so we can buy cheap garden furniture. I had never heard of Coltan. Laptops, mobile phones, playstations are running - and that is why the parties are fighting over the civil war in Congo, about this valuable metal. Children are sent to the mines under the worst circumstances. And the gorillas, in whose already small habitat the coltan lies, die for it.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: How strong is the awareness of animal welfare here? The orangutan film was hidden on ZDF at half past twelve in the late evening ...

Hannes Jaenicke: ... and had a gigantic quota. The consciousness is obviously present in the audience. The movie about the polar bears is coming at 8:15 pm. Prime Time. That's as great as it is unusual.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Do you think you are doing something with it?

Hannes Jaenicke: The Dutch forestry scientist Willie Smits, on whom we shot the orangutan film and who is rebuilding habitat for orangutans in Indonesia, received three times as many donations in the three weeks after the show as in the previous three years , And if I manage that 100 Germans buy no more teak or other tropical wood, then I have already won.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Which species of animals have you planned for next?

Hannes Jaenicke: First there will be films about sharks, gorillas and dolphins or small cetaceans.Especially with the latter, we go to large institutions. For example, Seaworld - dolphins are stuffed with antibiotics and systematically starved. Such a show dolphin does not do voluntarily in far too small pool his tricks ...

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Is a hard fight you are fighting for.

Hannes Jaenicke: But a more exciting and satisfying one. He is good for the anger. If you handle his anger properly, it can be very constructive.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Most find anger terrible.

Hannes Jaenicke: You just have to channel them properly. You can beat yourself in pubs, throw in window panes, flat rate shopping, becoming a freeclimber or basejumper. Or you can just shoot such films.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: You could also go into politics.

Hannes Jaenicke: Politicians who try to make a difference fight like Don Quixote against the windmills. I can see that right now to Sigmar Gabriel, the Minister of the Environment. He wants to change something. And failed at the industry, the EU, the coalition partner. He has little chance, be it for comparatively small things such as the ban on the polar bear hunt, the combination of the scrapping premium with the purchase of environmentally friendly cars or the taxation of aviation fuel.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: So ...

Hannes Jaenicke: ... needs a private initiative. Bono, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have sent more African children to school in just seven years than 50 years of development aid. The German Development Service is only there to open up new markets. If you really want to make a difference, you will quickly get frustrated in politics. He has to get involved with non-governmental organizations.