What the fate of Timmy the whale says about conservation

In this week’s newsletter: The public stranding of a young humpback exposes tensions between animal rights activism and other choices around biodiversity Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Timmy the whale is lost at sea, presumed dead. In normal circumstances, the loss of a young humpback whale would be a sad yet unremarkable part of the circle of life. Dead whales help sustain thousands of marine species – and are part of the global carbon cycle. But in the age of social media, the case took on a different meaning: millions of people saw videos and images of the juvenile male (given his nickname by the German media after repeated strandings on the Baltic coast) hovering between life and death, and many demanded that something was done to help the animal. Last week, a privately funded rescue mission – believed to have cost about €1.5m (£1.3m) – helped float Timmy away from the sandbanks. The photos of the whale in the barge are extraordinary – an apparent moment of hope that the creature would be saved. But the effort has ended in farce. The tracker, meant to monitor Timmy’s progress back into deeper waters, is not working. The animal is presumed dead, an