One of my friends lives on Viking Drive, in Hampton, and her back yard runs down to the stream that flows through the salt marshes. Every year the otters come in to whelp their pups.
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These are "charismatic mammals." The National Oceanographic and Atomosheric Administration actually has a division called, "Charismatic Mammals" which I know about because one of my friends was a lawyer in that section. She had to deal with laws which concerned these mammals.
Whenever you want to change the direction of an argument about the environment, global warming and ecology, and you are running up against the hard nosed businessmen who are talking about costs and money, all you have to do is trot out a few photos of these mammals in front of an auditorium of citizens and the mammals win.
"Oh," my lawyer friend says. "We are not above pushing some emotional buttons, when we are facing off against industry. They have the money, but we have the otters, and the seals and the polar bears." She laughs. "They really hate public hearings, the industry guys."
This emotional side of human beings can lead to some very bad places, but in the case of charismatic mammals, I think such pitches appeal to our better angels.
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