In 2006 I wrote a very cheeky letter to Vivendi Games, publisher of the mega-successful Crash Bandicoot video game franchise, asking for financial help for our community’s small bandicoot conservation project in the Adelaide Hills.

To quote my letter:

“For some years now my children have been playing the various ‘Crash Bandicoot’ games, and I have been struck by the irony that this small, beautiful marsupial has become a much-loved international icon in the electronic world while at the same time it is disappearing in the wild.”

“…I am wondering if there might be some scope for your organisation to recognise the plight of this animal, and perhaps to assist financially with its recovery.”

Unsurprisingly, I received no reply. But it did get me thinking.

So many animated film characters, sports teams, advertising images, games avatars – so much of our 21st century iconography – consist of images of the world’s dwindling stock of wild animals, many of which are endangered, and all of which are under pressure.

It is easy to see what the film makers and so forth get out of the deal – ready made, recognisable character blanks that are already imbued by the public with attributes and emotional triggers. It is much harder to see what the animals get out of it.

Remember the singing, dancing lemurs in the 2005 film Madagascar? The film cost $75 million to make, and grossed $542 million (according to the IMDb website), which was a lot of money at the time, and it spawned several sequels.

Actually $542 million sounds like quite a bit of money even in 2023.

I apologise to DreamWorks and Pacific Data Images if I have missed something, but I don’t believe the lemurs, lions, giraffes, penguins or multiple other animals which featured in the movie received any cut of the takings.

I have given up trying to figure out how much Crash Bandicoot has grossed – certainly much more than $1 billion – and I have no idea what the production budgets have been for its various incarnations.

However, my point is that a video game featuring a critically endangered Australian marsupial has brought in eight-figure takings for its owners, but the bandicoots are no better off as a result.

It’s not just international corporations.

I am a rugby union follower, so I support the Wallabies and Wallaroos – but none of the gate takings or other revenue from that sport ever finds its way to helping fund the plight of endangered macropod species in the wild.

So what I have I actually done about all this? Not very much. In 2014 I started a Facebook page called ‘Copyrights for Wild Things’ (currently 38 likes), with the thought that this might be a good project for my retirement. It’s still on my ‘to do one day’ (maybe) list.

That’s about it from my end. You can hardly get more ineffectual than that.

‘Species royalty’ could revolutionise conservation funding

But as it turns out, I am not the only who has had the same idea, nor even the first one. Others far more effectual than I am are on the case.

A paper in Animals by the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the UK’s University of Oxford in 2017 proposed a “species royalty” for the use of animal symbols, which it said could revolutionise conservation funding.

The paper by Caroline Good, Dawn Burnham and David W Macdonald – titled A Cultural Conscience for Conservation – was inspired by the much-publicised killing of Cecil the lion by a US trophy hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015.

“What the fallout of this moment has shown, is that if the powerful sentiment felt by millions of citizens worldwide is grasped, it could fund a movement to repay the historic cultural debt to animals,” the paper says.

“To do this, it is necessary to take stock of the proliferation of animal symbols, prints, and logos that adorn clothes, food, branding, and buildings. For centuries, they have brought human civilisations feelings of luck and protection, helping shape personal, professional, and national identities. It is now our turn to protect them and their habitat.”

The authors say that applying a ‘cultural conscience’ to the use of wild animal imagery could generate fees for wildlife conservation, in the same way that the use of images, models or designs generates fees for their human owners.

“What if each time the symbol of an endangered animal was used the species, or the effort to conserve it, was paid a royalty? This principle, applied to threatened, charismatic animals, could revolutionise funding for conservation; and just such a revolution is needed to reverse the current tumble to extinction.”

The paper lists three examples of where such species royalties might apply – food labelling, sports mascots and fashion.

It also details the cautionary tale of the armadillo logo used for the Brazilian soccer World Cup in 2014, where conservation scientists called on FIFA and the Brazilian government to protect 1,000 hectares of three-banded armadillo habitat for each goal scored in the tournament.

“The armoured mammal rapidly became the most successful FIFA World Cup mascot of all time, generating millions of dollars in revenue through merchandising. But after the excitement that centred around the mascot dissipated, FIFA did not support the proposed environmental initiatives. It would only have cost a fraction of the event’s revenue to support the initiative. It would also have looked good for FIFA.”

FIFA’s mis-use of the armadillo mascot, and its failure to live up to its environmental promises for the Brazilian World Cup, were lambasted by environmental groups at the time.

‘Save your logo’ – 2008 IUCN campaign

The University of Oxford paper also refers a notable earlier attempt to monetise the private sector’s use of wildlife imagery for conservation: the IUCN’s 2008 ‘Save Your Logo’ campaign.

Save Your Logo was a French-based collaboration between the World Bank, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) and the GEF (Global Environmental Facility). It was launched with much fanfare, and its first major success story was Lacoste’s crocodile logo.

Sadly, reading between the lines, it looks as if the Lacoste crocodile might have been the Save Your Logo campaign’s only success story.

Again, I apologise if I have got this wrong, but it appears that Save Your Logo’s ambitions narrowed to being a purely Lacoste thing, which Lacoste later morphed into a very worthy ‘Save Our Species’ marketing campaign, raising money for 10 endangered species.

Programs launched with great fanfare don’t usually announce their demise when they fizzle a few years later, so I haven’t been able to find out when the Save Your Logo initiative officially wound up. It is notable, however, that all sources refer to it in the past tense.

Doubtless there have been other incidences of businesses paying something to help conserve the species emblazoned on their products, but wouldn’t it be nice if they all did it?

I doubt there is any legal way to impose or enforce such a regime, but the court of public opinion can sometimes be a powerful arbiter, so perhaps corporations can be cajoled, brow-beaten or shamed into coughing up something for conservation of the species whose totemic value they exploit?

*****

Text (and photo) by David Mussared