Man swallowed by a snake 'to highlight deforestation'

The Tank often ponders how best to register our outrage at the world's rainforests being felled. Should we boycott products associated with illegal logging? Protest against companies involved? Or should we do the sensible thing and be eaten by a snake on TV?

If you're nodding along with the third idea, your name is probably Paul Rosolie, who must be the only person - ever - to volunteer for a trip down an anaconda's gullet. Although Nicki Minaj came pretty close.

Footage of Rosolie, an explorer and wildlife expert, being decked out in a custom-made snake-proof suit before being swallowed alive and subsequently regurgitated by a giant anaconda will apparently appear on the Discovery channel next month - unless execs bow to pressure from animal rights groups who have, understandably, come out against the stunt.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the whole affair which, to recap, will see A MAN BEING EATEN BY A SNAKE, is Rosolie's reasons for doing it, outlined in an Entertainment Weekly piece entitled 'A man, an Anaconda, and Their Quest To Save the Earth' that rather unfairly suggests the snake had a choice in the matter.

"I've seen entire 1,000-mile stretches of rainforest burned to the ground where every single plant and animal is destroyed - and no one pays attention to that," Rosolie said. "I've seen scientists spend their entire lives trying to rally public opinion and support, and people just don't care. People care about animals; they don't make the jump to caring about the habitat the animals live in... So I wanted to do something that would force a dialogue about what's going on here - and it's working."

When asked, reasonably, whether there might have been a better way to highlight rainforest destruction than being EATEN BY AN ACTUAL SNAKE, Rosolie replied, "No. There's not." Before adding, "Nothing else that I could have done would have gotten more attention than this". Which is probably true now that the BBC has decided wall-to-wall UKIP coverage is what the news-consuming public really wants.

But look. We are losing an estimated 58,000 square miles of forest every year - that's around 36 football fields every minute, folks. You can even watch the numbers tick up in real time. A well-intentioned chump halfway down a snake's gullet is not going to change this, unless delegates at Lima are sharing it on YouTube.

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• Topics
• Biodiversity
• Deforestation
• Biodiversity