Awakening Awe
by Dr. Mary Baures
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
--Albert Einstein
Wildebeest hesitate high up on a rocky outcropping over the raging Mara River in Kenya. Their bearded faces peer into a sea of comrades below, all swimming for their lives. Braying and grunting mingles with the thundering and splashing of the river. Pressure is mounting from behind. Courage or a shoulder on a rump pushes them. In a spray of hooves and dust, they trot, slide then slow to maintain balance. Steep pathways fuel their momentum for their leap into the river. They spread their legs, rise into a float. Their legs, weary from so much running, become wings. They billow, then disappear momentarily in a splash.
Bouncing and paddling amid a swarm of horns and tufted chins, they arrive at the opposite shore. A newbie, just born in the annual birthing season during the rains, dances happily toward his mother whom he’d lost in the plunge into the water. There are many more herbivores than crocodiles, but some have lost calves to teethy jaws. Many wildebeest sprain ankles or break legs. As exhaustion sets in, some are trampled. Driven by hunger, thirst, and some mysterious instinct, the largest herd of animals in the world follows a dream of rain-ripened grass.
Their clockwise ancient migratory route has been orchestrated over centuries. In February, they all give birth in the south of the Serengeti when, in two weeks, half a million calves are born. They may smell rain or feel pressure in the air, but they follow cloud bursts, which create fertile terrain. Instincts vector them, but the forces that drive them are as complex and fragile as Mother Nature herself.
I’m awestruck—feeling a mixture of fear, joy and surprise as I glimpse a hidden rhythm within the universe.
We live in an era of great hunger for grace. We can nourish it by slowing down and taking in the grandeur of the world. The world calls to us when we don’t try to control it. In Africa, I am alive in all my senses. Here I trust an older, deeper, more essential order. Here I feel kinship with the miraculous force from which all living things come.
We Need a Spiritual and Cultural Transformation
The human population bomb with consumerism, toxic chemicals, and a focus on profits has exploited the Earth’s ability to sustain itself. The earth is 4.6 billion years old. If we translate that to a scale of 46 years, we humans have been here four hours. A study by Greenpeace USA says that since the industrial revolution, one minute ago, we have destroyed 50% of the forests. Researchers from the World Wildlife Fund and Zoological Society of London found that we will have wiped out 67% of wildlife by 2020.
Our business model of life is driving other species toward extinction. As scientist Gus Speth said, “I used to think that the top environmental problems were biodiversity, ecosystem collapse, but I was wrong. It’s selfishness, greed, and apathy to deal with problems. We need a spiritual and cultural transformation. We scientists don’t know how to do that.”
As a psychologist with over thirty years experience, I have helped people though dark nights of the soul. Our culture is in one of those terrible places. The dream of the Earth entirely at our human disposal has become a nightmare. To survive, we need to reexamine our place in the order of things, what it deeply means to be human and a part of the larger environmental community. As Chief Seattle, leader of the Susquamish Native American Tribe said in 1854, “Human kind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.”
To love wildlife is to live in a world of wounds and a grief that sometimes doubles you over. In 2015, I photographed sun bears, orangutans and other primates in Borneo. Just after I left, palm oil companies torched the forest and some of the animals I photographed. They burned up clouded leopards, sun bears, pygmy elephants, tigers, horseshoe bats, Sumatra rhinos, gibbons, proboscis monkeys, and orangutans. Smoke like their ghosts drifted out of the charred woodlands.
When they slashed and burned, the forest floor of peat became a flammable accelerator. Rain did not extinguish the flames, because they were in the ground. The land itself was burning for months. There was little visibility through ochre air as embers and an acid haze poured into the sky. Toxic smoke caused respiratory infections in over half a million people as the inferno smoldered through 1.3 million hectares of forests. Children died. A large percentage of the world’s biodiversity became carnage, soot, and ash.
The Guardian’s George Monbiot described the eco-apocalypse as the greatest environmental disaster of the 21st century. He found it baffling that the media was more interested in “the dress that the Duchess of Cambridge wore” or “the latest James Bond Premiere.“
Getting Our Heads Out of the Sand
Denial keeps us from knowing the Earth is losing its capacity to sustain itself, so our first step in transformation is getting our heads out of the sand. We let go of apathy by knowing what’s happening. Then, we can stop those who rape the Earth for short-term profits.
As an individual, I am powerless to stop Pepsi Corporation and the makers of Oreo Cookies, and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, and other snacks from destroying endangered animals. Trees with palm oil can be planted in a responsible way, leaving forests for the animals. This forest friendly sustainable palm oil, grown on a smaller scale, is used by some companies—Nestle, Unilever, Kellogg’s, Starbucks, L’Oreal and Mars, Inc. Although some companies have made a commitment to certified palm oil, most are maximizing profits, by torching the whole forest. With consumer power, you and I can ban together with other shoppers to stop them. We can boycott their products until they use forest friendly palm oil. We can also encourage grocery stores to distinguish environmentally friendly products and elect leaders who block corporations from turning the bounty of nature into a hell on earth.
by Dr. Mary Baures
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
--Albert Einstein
Wildebeest hesitate high up on a rocky outcropping over the raging Mara River in Kenya. Their bearded faces peer into a sea of comrades below, all swimming for their lives. Braying and grunting mingles with the thundering and splashing of the river. Pressure is mounting from behind. Courage or a shoulder on a rump pushes them. In a spray of hooves and dust, they trot, slide then slow to maintain balance. Steep pathways fuel their momentum for their leap into the river. They spread their legs, rise into a float. Their legs, weary from so much running, become wings. They billow, then disappear momentarily in a splash.
Bouncing and paddling amid a swarm of horns and tufted chins, they arrive at the opposite shore. A newbie, just born in the annual birthing season during the rains, dances happily toward his mother whom he’d lost in the plunge into the water. There are many more herbivores than crocodiles, but some have lost calves to teethy jaws. Many wildebeest sprain ankles or break legs. As exhaustion sets in, some are trampled. Driven by hunger, thirst, and some mysterious instinct, the largest herd of animals in the world follows a dream of rain-ripened grass.
Their clockwise ancient migratory route has been orchestrated over centuries. In February, they all give birth in the south of the Serengeti when, in two weeks, half a million calves are born. They may smell rain or feel pressure in the air, but they follow cloud bursts, which create fertile terrain. Instincts vector them, but the forces that drive them are as complex and fragile as Mother Nature herself.
I’m awestruck—feeling a mixture of fear, joy and surprise as I glimpse a hidden rhythm within the universe.
We live in an era of great hunger for grace. We can nourish it by slowing down and taking in the grandeur of the world. The world calls to us when we don’t try to control it. In Africa, I am alive in all my senses. Here I trust an older, deeper, more essential order. Here I feel kinship with the miraculous force from which all living things come.
We Need a Spiritual and Cultural Transformation
The human population bomb with consumerism, toxic chemicals, and a focus on profits has exploited the Earth’s ability to sustain itself. The earth is 4.6 billion years old. If we translate that to a scale of 46 years, we humans have been here four hours. A study by Greenpeace USA says that since the industrial revolution, one minute ago, we have destroyed 50% of the forests. Researchers from the World Wildlife Fund and Zoological Society of London found that we will have wiped out 67% of wildlife by 2020.
Our business model of life is driving other species toward extinction. As scientist Gus Speth said, “I used to think that the top environmental problems were biodiversity, ecosystem collapse, but I was wrong. It’s selfishness, greed, and apathy to deal with problems. We need a spiritual and cultural transformation. We scientists don’t know how to do that.”
As a psychologist with over thirty years experience, I have helped people though dark nights of the soul. Our culture is in one of those terrible places. The dream of the Earth entirely at our human disposal has become a nightmare. To survive, we need to reexamine our place in the order of things, what it deeply means to be human and a part of the larger environmental community. As Chief Seattle, leader of the Susquamish Native American Tribe said in 1854, “Human kind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.”
To love wildlife is to live in a world of wounds and a grief that sometimes doubles you over. In 2015, I photographed sun bears, orangutans and other primates in Borneo. Just after I left, palm oil companies torched the forest and some of the animals I photographed. They burned up clouded leopards, sun bears, pygmy elephants, tigers, horseshoe bats, Sumatra rhinos, gibbons, proboscis monkeys, and orangutans. Smoke like their ghosts drifted out of the charred woodlands.
When they slashed and burned, the forest floor of peat became a flammable accelerator. Rain did not extinguish the flames, because they were in the ground. The land itself was burning for months. There was little visibility through ochre air as embers and an acid haze poured into the sky. Toxic smoke caused respiratory infections in over half a million people as the inferno smoldered through 1.3 million hectares of forests. Children died. A large percentage of the world’s biodiversity became carnage, soot, and ash.
The Guardian’s George Monbiot described the eco-apocalypse as the greatest environmental disaster of the 21st century. He found it baffling that the media was more interested in “the dress that the Duchess of Cambridge wore” or “the latest James Bond Premiere.“
Getting Our Heads Out of the Sand
Denial keeps us from knowing the Earth is losing its capacity to sustain itself, so our first step in transformation is getting our heads out of the sand. We let go of apathy by knowing what’s happening. Then, we can stop those who rape the Earth for short-term profits.
As an individual, I am powerless to stop Pepsi Corporation and the makers of Oreo Cookies, and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, and other snacks from destroying endangered animals. Trees with palm oil can be planted in a responsible way, leaving forests for the animals. This forest friendly sustainable palm oil, grown on a smaller scale, is used by some companies—Nestle, Unilever, Kellogg’s, Starbucks, L’Oreal and Mars, Inc. Although some companies have made a commitment to certified palm oil, most are maximizing profits, by torching the whole forest. With consumer power, you and I can ban together with other shoppers to stop them. We can boycott their products until they use forest friendly palm oil. We can also encourage grocery stores to distinguish environmentally friendly products and elect leaders who block corporations from turning the bounty of nature into a hell on earth.
The grief I felt about the cremation of the rainforest for corporate profits was constant. It could not be pushed aside. I emerged from my anguish by focusing on life not extinguished—Mara, an orphan orangutan with wild red hair and a pale circle around her expressive eyes. I met her and other orphans learning how to find termites and weave nests to return to the wild in in Forest School at the Orangutan Care Center in the village of Pasir Panjang. The dedication, compassion and love of her surrogate human mom and the staff at the orphanage renewed my hope.
Ending the Cult of Superiority by Cultivating Awareness To step back into nature requires deprogramming our cult of human superiority. What we did to a disabled bear in New Jersey is an example of how we play God when we are not competent to be God. Pedals had one amputated arm and the other maimed, but he learned to walk upright. Mistaken for a man in a bear suit, he became a social media darling in 2014. Many recorded his distinctive gait, posting the sightings on Pedals the Injured Bipedal Bear Facebook page. Unable to defend himself, he was not dangerous. Teachers used him as an example of resilience, but his handicap made survival difficult. Frequently, he collapsed in a road and had to elbow his way off. |
Sabrina Walsh Pugsley’s heart shattered when Pedals wandered into her parent’s backyard in Oak Ridge. Thin, with a dull coat, Pedals breathed heavily and was often so exhausted he lay down for ten minutes before making his way back to the forest.
She began a GoFundMe page which raised $22,000 to rescue Pedals. The Orphaned Wildlife Center agreed to build a home for him with a door out to a pond where, along with fourteen other bears, he’d have a natural setting, medical attention, food, and protection from winter. A petition to wildlife officials to send Pedals to the sanctuary collected 315,000 signatures but they refused.
When bear massacres began in New Jersey, Pedals fans feared he would get killed. Again, their pleas were denied. On October 14, 2016, Lisa Rose-Rublack, who been advocating for Pedals, wrote, “PEDALS IS DEAD. The hunter who has wanted him dead for nearly 3 years had the satisfaction of putting an arrow through him.”
In death, all dignity was gone. Strung upside down by his feet in the back of a truck, sticky fluids matted his muzzle. Just as his life was a struggle to live, he must have gurgled to breathe through horrific pain as his life ended. His head rested beside a pile of plastic bottles, a green cooler, a yellow target, a blue wheelbarrow, and a bag of apples. Poor Pedals was lured to his death by an apple.
That the state of New Jersey sponsored the massacre speaks to the sickness and gratuitous violence of our culture. In 2005, Dr. Ed Tavss did a study of hunting black bears and found conclusively that hunting them did not decrease complaints about them. A nonviolent approach using trash containments, not bear hunts, decreased complaints about bears. There is no scientifically valid argument a harvest of bears reduces human-bear conflicts in suburbs. Experts say bears lured out of the forest by human food are the problem.
Why did New Jersey promote a bear massacre when scientists say trash containment is the solution to bear conflicts? A hunting group, New Jersey Outdoor Alliance sponsored a $15,000 fundraiser for governor Chris Christie and one of the leaders, Anthony Mauro was appointed to Christie’s environmental protection team. According to Doris Lin, a lawyer for the Animal Protection League of New Jersey and the Bear Education and Resource Group, and Stu Chaifetz, a spokesman for the group Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, the bear hunt was “payback for campaign help” and a “fix” from the beginning.
According to Senator Raymond Lesniak, non-lethal solutions were preferred by 74% of New Jersey voters and only .07% of the population wanted a bear hunt. Although 64% of people poled by the Humane Society oppose trophy hunting, politicians in power sanctioned them. What about a government for and by the people? (Editor’s note: you can learn about NJ Smart Bear Legislation here at http://savenjbears.com/take-action.php).
Our world is broken, and we cannot rely on our leaders to stop unfathomable acts of cruelty or to find new values, priorities, and paths to the future. As former President Jimmy Carter explained, “America is no longer a democracy and has become an oligarchy.” Paybacks to rich contributors by leaders “has caused the worst damage to our basic moral and ethical standards.”
Teaching Our Children a Healthy Power
When trophy hunters in Minnesota taught their children the thrill of killing, they set up the shot and had their kids pull the trigger. The kids said, “I pretended the bear was going to bite me, that’s why I shot him.” Or “I imagined the bear running toward me and about to leap on me.” All of the children pretended they killed in self-defense. Children have a moral compass that killing for fun is wrong.
Children exposed to killing animals for a thrill are brainwashed into human arrogance. We don’t need a genie in a bottle to predict their empathy will be stunted as they feel power by disempowering others.
Real men and women protect life. They do not turn the preciousness of life into smelly, rotten death for a thrill. Parents should not normalize cruel behaviors. Rescuing those who can’t defend themselves is a healthier way to feel power rather than killing, maiming and destroying. Other ways are growing a garden, developing abilities, creating art, music or poetry.
Whistleblowing on Wildlife Services
In the American West, a rogue agency called Wildlife Services (controlled by ranchers and paid for by our taxes) is recklessly trapping and poisoning elk, coyotes, eagles, mountain lions, and bears. Despite persistent outrage and ecologists who say the killings are not necessary, according to their own data, Wildlife Services killed 2.7 million animals in 2016 and 3.2 million in 2015.
The service was designed to help us co-exist with wildlife. Instead, they are driving wildlife to extinction to benefit ranchers who seek to secure their livestock. Employees are told that if the ranchers aren’t happy, Wildlife Service employees will no longer have a job.
According to Christopher Ketcham of Harper’s Magazine, Wildlife Services uses M-44, a spring-loaded device that ejects a blast of sodium cyanide to kill coyotes. Ketcham explains how Wildlife Services employees in Uvalde, Texas loaded the M-44 into the mouths of stray dogs to test its efficacy and laughed as the dogs writhed and convulsed in pain.
Two former Wildlife Services trappers Gary Strader and Rex Shaddox, and US Fish &Wildlife special agent Doug McKenna cracked the agency’s impenetrable secrecy in Exposed: USDA’s Secret War on Wildlife, a film that exposes this illegal and barbaric killing of wildlife. After watching the film, Jane Goodall expressed “horror that cruelty of this magnitude and scale has been perpetrated for so long in the name of the American government. This is the 21st Century. There is indisputable evidence that we are not the only beings on the planet earth to know physical and emotional suffering.” In June 2017, conservationists in California sued them for “morally unconscionable, scientifically unsound and environmentally harmful” practices.
According to Professor William Ripple of Oregon State University, killing cougars, wolves, lions, leopards, pumas, and lynxes collapses ecosystems. They are a precious resource to limit browsers who destroy vegetation holding riverbanks in place needed by birds and smaller mammals. He says we need to increase human tolerance for carnivores, because they buffer climate change. They keep herbivores in check allowing woody plants and crops to flourish.
Once we end our cult of superiority and cultivate awareness through education, we can also save money and lives. For instance, we could save 8 billion dollars a year on vehicle damage from collisions with animals if we built wildlife crossings. A motion activated camera on crossings in northwest Montana on highway 93 show 23,000 crossings in 2015, with several scenes of animals teaching their young to use them. A 2016 study by Western Transportation Institute showed accidents with large mammals fell 80% in places along sections of highway near prominent crossings. Their success may encourage more states to construct bridges and tunnels for wildlife. The most successful crossings are combined with fencing which directs animals where to go.
Letting Nature Take Its Course
In Yellowstone National Park, I recently heard the long, wavering swell of a wolf calling. He was joined by a chorus of others echoing across the landscape. Native Americans believe when our small mind encounters a wolf’s howl, we delight in his energy. But, when our larger mind encounters silver-throated songs echoing back rhythmically, they speak to us in visions.
For me, the howls offered hope for creatures full of life teaching us nature’s wisdom. In the 1920s, after we gruesomely exterminated wolves in Yellowstone, elk and deer nibbled new shoots of aspen, willows, and other plants needed by rabbits, weasels, foxes, and beavers. Without wolves, the balance of Mother Nature was destroyed. With the return of fourteen wolves in 1995, life bloomed over the terrain like a wolf’s song.
As wolves kept elk herds and deer on the move, trees came back. Foliage flourished with berries, bugs, and birds. Roots stabilized riverbanks and enabled beavers to find materials for lodges and thus thrive. Their dams attracted badgers, muskrats, and rabbits. With more vegetation, river channels narrowed lowering the threat of floods. Wolves were better stewards of the landscape than people.
When we see how wolves regenerated the landscape, we can raise our voice to object to their massacre. At first, we are a lone voice on a hill, but others who know their enchantment, spontaneity, and serendipity join in a chorus to challenge cultural norms destroying our world.
Exercising Compassion with Grass Roots Power
Many are marching toward a renaissance that embraces evolution rather than extinction. Some are trying to save the rainforests. Some are protecting elephants, rhinos, lions, orangutans, bears, and whales. Some are trying to save coral reefs. With grass roots power, many are blazing a trail of reverence and compassion instead of exploitation and destruction.
Throughout history, grief and injustice have provided an engine for change. Marches have taken to the streets to protest perversions of power destroying the earth and distributing suffering and death to those who can’t defend themselves.
Deeply involved in this movement, Marc Ching says cultures are created by a single effort that becomes a nation. He is founder of The Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation. “I want to die knowing I was the best person I could be. That I reached out. That I did what I could. The greatest gift in life is giving.”
Ching rescues dogs from the Yulin Dog Meet Festival in China where torture is believed to give meat a better flavor. The suffering he witnessed was horrendous. “In misery you forget the living. You forget the beating of hearts. You forget the meaning of family.” But, he says, “love turns you back toward the living.”
Ching says he wants his children to grow up in a world where other species have a right to share the earth. ”I wonder how evolution has not reached certain parts of humanity and…how cruelty still exists.”
He has shut down six slaughterhouses in China and five more closings are pending. When he goes into a slaughterhouse and sees the dirt dogs bleed into, no words can capture the suffering. Even when they die, he gives them a day of love and peace. He is a light in their darkness.
Be the Light in an Animal’s Darkness
We can ban together to stop those who don’t give animals a right to life. After the 2015 bear hunt in Florida, many were outraged by the 296 slaughtered bears and cubs left to die. Demonstrations throughout Florida convinced authorities to cancel the 2017 and 2018 hunts. Adam Sugalski, the founder of the advocacy group One Protest organized the protests and said that the Florida Fish and wildlife Conservation Commission realized that hunters represent only one percept of the population. “The 99% of the people who did not want to see bears killed finally got a voice.”
If healthier ways of living becomes universal, we can save lives and the damage done to our habitat. First, as William Butler Yeats wrote, we “must lie down where all the ladders start—in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”
Editorial Note: For the most part, Wildlife Services supports many federal and state agencies and NGOs in protecting endangered species, reducing invasive species, and preventing wildlife disease outbreaks. Most of these issues are anthropogenic and left unregulated can have serious negative consequences for ecosystems. In states where agriculture is king, however, Wildlife Services has much work to do to balance the needs of industry with more productive and humane treatment of wildlife.
Mary Baures holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from Antioch New England and three master’s degrees including one in Creative Writing from Boston University. She taught writing in the MFA Writing Program at Emerson College and has a psychology practice in Beverly, Massachusetts that she conducts with her therapy dog, Gabby. She is the author of Undaunted Spirits—Portraits of Recovery from Trauma, Love Heals Baby Elephants—Rebirthing Ivory Orphans and many other publications.
She began a GoFundMe page which raised $22,000 to rescue Pedals. The Orphaned Wildlife Center agreed to build a home for him with a door out to a pond where, along with fourteen other bears, he’d have a natural setting, medical attention, food, and protection from winter. A petition to wildlife officials to send Pedals to the sanctuary collected 315,000 signatures but they refused.
When bear massacres began in New Jersey, Pedals fans feared he would get killed. Again, their pleas were denied. On October 14, 2016, Lisa Rose-Rublack, who been advocating for Pedals, wrote, “PEDALS IS DEAD. The hunter who has wanted him dead for nearly 3 years had the satisfaction of putting an arrow through him.”
In death, all dignity was gone. Strung upside down by his feet in the back of a truck, sticky fluids matted his muzzle. Just as his life was a struggle to live, he must have gurgled to breathe through horrific pain as his life ended. His head rested beside a pile of plastic bottles, a green cooler, a yellow target, a blue wheelbarrow, and a bag of apples. Poor Pedals was lured to his death by an apple.
That the state of New Jersey sponsored the massacre speaks to the sickness and gratuitous violence of our culture. In 2005, Dr. Ed Tavss did a study of hunting black bears and found conclusively that hunting them did not decrease complaints about them. A nonviolent approach using trash containments, not bear hunts, decreased complaints about bears. There is no scientifically valid argument a harvest of bears reduces human-bear conflicts in suburbs. Experts say bears lured out of the forest by human food are the problem.
Why did New Jersey promote a bear massacre when scientists say trash containment is the solution to bear conflicts? A hunting group, New Jersey Outdoor Alliance sponsored a $15,000 fundraiser for governor Chris Christie and one of the leaders, Anthony Mauro was appointed to Christie’s environmental protection team. According to Doris Lin, a lawyer for the Animal Protection League of New Jersey and the Bear Education and Resource Group, and Stu Chaifetz, a spokesman for the group Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, the bear hunt was “payback for campaign help” and a “fix” from the beginning.
According to Senator Raymond Lesniak, non-lethal solutions were preferred by 74% of New Jersey voters and only .07% of the population wanted a bear hunt. Although 64% of people poled by the Humane Society oppose trophy hunting, politicians in power sanctioned them. What about a government for and by the people? (Editor’s note: you can learn about NJ Smart Bear Legislation here at http://savenjbears.com/take-action.php).
Our world is broken, and we cannot rely on our leaders to stop unfathomable acts of cruelty or to find new values, priorities, and paths to the future. As former President Jimmy Carter explained, “America is no longer a democracy and has become an oligarchy.” Paybacks to rich contributors by leaders “has caused the worst damage to our basic moral and ethical standards.”
Teaching Our Children a Healthy Power
When trophy hunters in Minnesota taught their children the thrill of killing, they set up the shot and had their kids pull the trigger. The kids said, “I pretended the bear was going to bite me, that’s why I shot him.” Or “I imagined the bear running toward me and about to leap on me.” All of the children pretended they killed in self-defense. Children have a moral compass that killing for fun is wrong.
Children exposed to killing animals for a thrill are brainwashed into human arrogance. We don’t need a genie in a bottle to predict their empathy will be stunted as they feel power by disempowering others.
Real men and women protect life. They do not turn the preciousness of life into smelly, rotten death for a thrill. Parents should not normalize cruel behaviors. Rescuing those who can’t defend themselves is a healthier way to feel power rather than killing, maiming and destroying. Other ways are growing a garden, developing abilities, creating art, music or poetry.
Whistleblowing on Wildlife Services
In the American West, a rogue agency called Wildlife Services (controlled by ranchers and paid for by our taxes) is recklessly trapping and poisoning elk, coyotes, eagles, mountain lions, and bears. Despite persistent outrage and ecologists who say the killings are not necessary, according to their own data, Wildlife Services killed 2.7 million animals in 2016 and 3.2 million in 2015.
The service was designed to help us co-exist with wildlife. Instead, they are driving wildlife to extinction to benefit ranchers who seek to secure their livestock. Employees are told that if the ranchers aren’t happy, Wildlife Service employees will no longer have a job.
According to Christopher Ketcham of Harper’s Magazine, Wildlife Services uses M-44, a spring-loaded device that ejects a blast of sodium cyanide to kill coyotes. Ketcham explains how Wildlife Services employees in Uvalde, Texas loaded the M-44 into the mouths of stray dogs to test its efficacy and laughed as the dogs writhed and convulsed in pain.
Two former Wildlife Services trappers Gary Strader and Rex Shaddox, and US Fish &Wildlife special agent Doug McKenna cracked the agency’s impenetrable secrecy in Exposed: USDA’s Secret War on Wildlife, a film that exposes this illegal and barbaric killing of wildlife. After watching the film, Jane Goodall expressed “horror that cruelty of this magnitude and scale has been perpetrated for so long in the name of the American government. This is the 21st Century. There is indisputable evidence that we are not the only beings on the planet earth to know physical and emotional suffering.” In June 2017, conservationists in California sued them for “morally unconscionable, scientifically unsound and environmentally harmful” practices.
According to Professor William Ripple of Oregon State University, killing cougars, wolves, lions, leopards, pumas, and lynxes collapses ecosystems. They are a precious resource to limit browsers who destroy vegetation holding riverbanks in place needed by birds and smaller mammals. He says we need to increase human tolerance for carnivores, because they buffer climate change. They keep herbivores in check allowing woody plants and crops to flourish.
Once we end our cult of superiority and cultivate awareness through education, we can also save money and lives. For instance, we could save 8 billion dollars a year on vehicle damage from collisions with animals if we built wildlife crossings. A motion activated camera on crossings in northwest Montana on highway 93 show 23,000 crossings in 2015, with several scenes of animals teaching their young to use them. A 2016 study by Western Transportation Institute showed accidents with large mammals fell 80% in places along sections of highway near prominent crossings. Their success may encourage more states to construct bridges and tunnels for wildlife. The most successful crossings are combined with fencing which directs animals where to go.
Letting Nature Take Its Course
In Yellowstone National Park, I recently heard the long, wavering swell of a wolf calling. He was joined by a chorus of others echoing across the landscape. Native Americans believe when our small mind encounters a wolf’s howl, we delight in his energy. But, when our larger mind encounters silver-throated songs echoing back rhythmically, they speak to us in visions.
For me, the howls offered hope for creatures full of life teaching us nature’s wisdom. In the 1920s, after we gruesomely exterminated wolves in Yellowstone, elk and deer nibbled new shoots of aspen, willows, and other plants needed by rabbits, weasels, foxes, and beavers. Without wolves, the balance of Mother Nature was destroyed. With the return of fourteen wolves in 1995, life bloomed over the terrain like a wolf’s song.
As wolves kept elk herds and deer on the move, trees came back. Foliage flourished with berries, bugs, and birds. Roots stabilized riverbanks and enabled beavers to find materials for lodges and thus thrive. Their dams attracted badgers, muskrats, and rabbits. With more vegetation, river channels narrowed lowering the threat of floods. Wolves were better stewards of the landscape than people.
When we see how wolves regenerated the landscape, we can raise our voice to object to their massacre. At first, we are a lone voice on a hill, but others who know their enchantment, spontaneity, and serendipity join in a chorus to challenge cultural norms destroying our world.
Exercising Compassion with Grass Roots Power
Many are marching toward a renaissance that embraces evolution rather than extinction. Some are trying to save the rainforests. Some are protecting elephants, rhinos, lions, orangutans, bears, and whales. Some are trying to save coral reefs. With grass roots power, many are blazing a trail of reverence and compassion instead of exploitation and destruction.
Throughout history, grief and injustice have provided an engine for change. Marches have taken to the streets to protest perversions of power destroying the earth and distributing suffering and death to those who can’t defend themselves.
Deeply involved in this movement, Marc Ching says cultures are created by a single effort that becomes a nation. He is founder of The Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation. “I want to die knowing I was the best person I could be. That I reached out. That I did what I could. The greatest gift in life is giving.”
Ching rescues dogs from the Yulin Dog Meet Festival in China where torture is believed to give meat a better flavor. The suffering he witnessed was horrendous. “In misery you forget the living. You forget the beating of hearts. You forget the meaning of family.” But, he says, “love turns you back toward the living.”
Ching says he wants his children to grow up in a world where other species have a right to share the earth. ”I wonder how evolution has not reached certain parts of humanity and…how cruelty still exists.”
He has shut down six slaughterhouses in China and five more closings are pending. When he goes into a slaughterhouse and sees the dirt dogs bleed into, no words can capture the suffering. Even when they die, he gives them a day of love and peace. He is a light in their darkness.
Be the Light in an Animal’s Darkness
We can ban together to stop those who don’t give animals a right to life. After the 2015 bear hunt in Florida, many were outraged by the 296 slaughtered bears and cubs left to die. Demonstrations throughout Florida convinced authorities to cancel the 2017 and 2018 hunts. Adam Sugalski, the founder of the advocacy group One Protest organized the protests and said that the Florida Fish and wildlife Conservation Commission realized that hunters represent only one percept of the population. “The 99% of the people who did not want to see bears killed finally got a voice.”
If healthier ways of living becomes universal, we can save lives and the damage done to our habitat. First, as William Butler Yeats wrote, we “must lie down where all the ladders start—in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”
Editorial Note: For the most part, Wildlife Services supports many federal and state agencies and NGOs in protecting endangered species, reducing invasive species, and preventing wildlife disease outbreaks. Most of these issues are anthropogenic and left unregulated can have serious negative consequences for ecosystems. In states where agriculture is king, however, Wildlife Services has much work to do to balance the needs of industry with more productive and humane treatment of wildlife.
Mary Baures holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from Antioch New England and three master’s degrees including one in Creative Writing from Boston University. She taught writing in the MFA Writing Program at Emerson College and has a psychology practice in Beverly, Massachusetts that she conducts with her therapy dog, Gabby. She is the author of Undaunted Spirits—Portraits of Recovery from Trauma, Love Heals Baby Elephants—Rebirthing Ivory Orphans and many other publications.