Wasted Away...Again

Some of what follows may not be for everyone as it discusses slaughterhouses, hunting in excess and language which may prove disturbing...please consider this before proceeding.

    Admittedly, this post sat for nearly two weeks as I decided whether or not portions of it would bother readers, as it did me.  At times it can feel as if hope and compassion and respect for life is being pushed into a corner, forced to cower as if held captive to an apparent uncaring force.  But then I also see so many other examples of what could be, what is again possible, as if the cell doors have been left open and the morning light is peeking through to reveal an empty room, a hint at awakening from a bad dream.  Images and stories of what is horrifying but true tend to be like knife cuts, perhaps not enough to deeply wound but deep enough to scar;  I've certainly had my share of reading about and viewing modern-day slaughterhouses with their methods being enough to steer me away from eating meat; we may have moved on from ancient practices of clubs and knives to elevator-sized electrocution rooms but it is no more pleasant (it's how modern day pigs are processed).  So I've debated this and come to the conclusion that sometimes we need to see or read about the bad, and the negative, and the horror, not so much to scar but to make us decide; we can turn up the volume or shut it all off and pretend it doesn't happen, or maybe we can enact a change, something as simple as our buying habits or our choice on the menu or in picking up that stray piece of plastic flying in the wind, stuck to a branch.  Or maybe not...everyone makes their own decision.  But maybe a tiny choice we make will be seen by another and another and another, and those cell walls will rust away and we'll find that we were stronger and more powerful than we ever knew.  There is indeed a lot of good and hope and love in the world and while it may not be expressed in movies and news and online, it is there in the everyday people we meet, from the homeless person to the neighbor to the stranger.  Anyway, all that said, here is how it all began...

Red shows states that allow wildlife killing "contests."  Graph: Project Coyote

     I had watched a video, well, only partially watched because it was simply something I did not want to stay with me (even though it did) and even though it came from National Geographic.  In the video it displayed the new "sport" of wildlife killing contests where men (I didn't see any women, at least in the portion of the video I watched) take their high-powered scoped rifles and, making sure that they are completely out of harm's way, shoot pretty much anything...as long as it is considered vermin or a pest or something that "needs" to be eliminated.  Said National Geographic about these sport killings: Never heard of them?  You’re not alone.  They cater to a niche group of hunters and are increasingly held in undisclosed locations because of the controversy they generate.  Wildlife killing contests are exactly what they sound like: competitions to kill as many of a particular species within a certain time period as possible.  Often, they target predators like coyotes, foxes, and bobcats.  Contest targets also include crows, rabbits, and raccoons.  

    I stopped watching the film when it showed a flatbed (one of those attached trailers that carry ATVs and snowmobiles and such) piled high with dead coyotes, all of which would simply be taken to the landfill and dumped.  Said Felipe DeAndrade, the National Geographic Explorer who filmed this:  I love wildlife absolutely more than anything else on the planet, and the thing I loathe the most is injustice.  When you consider that these killing contests are happening in over 40 states and on public lands, people are being robbed of rich wildlife encounters and more importantly, biodiversity.  I wanted to show people that there are proper ways to “manage” wildlife based on science and that these contests don’t do that...I wanted to learn exactly why people compete in these contests, and to experience the emotional and physical process myself.  The strongest feeling I left with was “what a waste.”  The animals, for the most part, get discarded in dumpsters after the contests.  Not much can be done with the fur because of the bullet wounds, and most people don’t eat coyote and bobcat meat.  The magazine added: DeAndrade went on to explain that predator killing contests are typically rationalized by saying the goal is to protect livestock, despite scientific evidence showing that they tend to do the opposite.  And, he learned, many hunters themselves are opposed to these contests because the controversy they generate gives hunting a bad reputation.

    Said the same magazine in a later but different event: Outrage has grown after a Wisconsin wolf hunt led to at least 216 wolves dead in less than 60 hours—nearly a hundred more than the state quota.  The hunt followed the gray wolf’s removal from the Endangered Species Act list, a move the Biden administration may reverse.  The killings occurred during breeding season, say environmentalists, who tried to stop the hunt.  Added Smithsonian: "Trophy hunters and trappers drastically blew past the quota of 119 and killed over 200 wolves, using the most egregious methods imaginable and during the breeding season when wolves are pregnant,” said Megan Nicholson, Wisconsin state director for the Humane Society of the United States, echoing a story from the New York Times which quoted a spokesperson: Mr. Arrivo said it was possible that many of the wolves killed last week were pregnant or might have been mothers with new pups that were still dependent on them and might now die of starvation. (at this point it should be noted that while president, Trump lifted restrictions for hunters so that bears and their cubs could be shot and killed in their dens while still hibernating)

    Unfortunately it doesn't stop there.  Tiger farms now face diminished demand (an estimated 8000 tigers are still "raised" in such farms) and many are becoming little more than meat farms, said The Conversation.  Giraffes have also declined, now numbering less than 70,000 (a 40% decline in the past 30 years), said the African Wildlife Foundation (the London Review also noted: In a ten-year period, American hunters imported 3744 dead giraffes -- about 5 percent of the total number alive.)  And then there's our freshwater fish.  Said Smithsonian: Humanity’s ever-expanding footprint has slashed biodiversity in more than half of Earth’s freshwater river basins, with only 14 percent remaining pristine, according to new research published last week in the journal Science.  This week, 16 conservation organizations released a global assessment of the world’s freshwater fish species, finding nearly a third are at risk of extinction.  This most recent assessment, titled The World’s Forgotten Fishes, also finds that the biggest fishes—species weighing more than 60 pounds—have undergone a particularly calamitous decline, with their numbers plummeting by 94 percent over the past half century.  My own state recently signed into law that any person over the age of 21 may carry a concealed weapon without a permit or any sort of gun safety training, becoming the 18th state to do so.  What exactly is going on here?

    Wrote Katherine May in her book Wintering: The hunting of wolves was never discouraged under the Norman kings, but Edward I, who reigned from 1272 to 1307, was the first king to order the extermination of all wolves in England...the wolves fought on, but by 1509, at the end of Henry VII's reign, they were thought to be extinct in England, or at least so rare as to pose no threat.  Their elimination in Scotland is thought to have come nearly two centuries later...But wolves are still there.  There are an estimated 300,000 wolves across the world, and despite their persecution, their numbers are rising.  Whether we see them or not, they are a symbol of low cunning and the rapacious hunger of winter.  They endure as a reminder of the wild potential of the lands outside our busy well-lit towns and cities, or the capacity of nature to still be red in tooth and claw...They are the enemy we love to hate, the feral intelligence we most fear.  The morality is mutable.  They do what they have to do.  In the wolf, we are offered a mirror of ourselves as we might be, without the comforts and constraints of civilisation...In the depths of winters, we are all wolfish.  We want in the archaic sense of the word, as if we are lacking something and need to absorb it in order to be whole again.  These wants are often astonishingly inaccurate: drugs and alcohol, which poison instead of reintegrate; relationships with people who do not make us feel safe or loved; objects that we do not need, cannot afford, which hang around our necks like albatrosses of debt long after the yearning for them has passed.  Underneath this chaos and clutter lies a longing for more elemental things -- love, beauty, comfort, a short spell of oblivion once in awhile.  Everyday life is so often isolated, dreary, and lonely.  A little craving is understandable.  A little craving might actually be the rallying cry of survival...if we eradicate them altogether, where does that leave us?  The wolf is part of our collective psyche, as elemental to our thinking as the sun and the moon.

     While I am not a hunter (somewhat obviously), I have friends who are hunters and take pride in their tradition of enduring long days and nights stalking something, respecting and later eating the kill, and being sure that the animal's death is quick one and done with a bit of dignity.  Theirs is not a randomized free-for-all of killing and harvesting.  But I think that given an opportunity to role play and answer the question of "what do you want to be?" even at this late stage of my life, I would likely not answer a hunter, or at least not one who hunts for sport.  This is not meant as a judgement, but it is simply not me.  Life, in any form, is too precious.  We seem to have grown to almost expect our resources --animals, food, minerals, soil-- to never end, that we can take and take and take without consequence.  Imagine the weight of just a small bag of sugar and you'll have an idea of how much each one of us throws away each day...4.9 pounds.  We send food down the disposal, we leave food on our plates, we leave the tap running, we leave the lights on...we now toss away so much plastic that nearly a third of the fish we consume have micro- or nano-beads of plastic in their flesh, reported The Conversation.*  What goes around comes around. 

    "There's a lot of messed up things in this world and plenty of things I don't understand," said one of the main characters in Same Kind of Different As Me, "and there's no shortage of bad things happening to good people."  The true story could have added animals, and our planet to the mix.  We waste a lot including the lives of ourselves and of others; we waste our talents and our possibilities; we waste our time as if it will never end.  We are born, we live, and we die, and the only things that we might possibly take with us when we do die are our thoughts and memories...what part of that are we not understanding?  Even great pharaohs become nothing more than a mummified piece of dust.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...

    In part two of this I will attempt to bring up other issues such as racism and the fight for monotheistic religion, as well as our puzzling quest to feel superior; why do we have the urge to be the top predator or to climb the tallest mountain or think that we are the favored species, or to feel the need to leave this planet altogether?   Some of today's top scientists feel that even ideas such as unity, infinity, and how our universe was created may need to be reconsidered; as John Brockman wrote in his book, This Idea Must Die: Science advances by discovering new things and developing new ideas.  Few truly new ideas are developed without abandoning old ones first.   Will we ever lose the desire to kill or to conquer, or to consider a person or a race or an animal inferior, or to feel that we need more...more money, more power, more whatever?  Perhaps we don't need to be wearing a full-length giraffe coat (unfortunately, a popular imported item).

    George Harrison wrote for the Beatles: I feel that ice is slowly melting...it seems like years since it's been clear.  Here comes the sun.  Hope is on the horizon, hope that a "change is gonna come."  Perhaps this is indeed a good time to start to abandon old ideas and to imagine a new world, a new us.  Jackie DeShannon (she once opened for the Beatles) wrote: Take a good look around, and if you're looking down, put a little love in your heart.  I hope when you decide, kindness will be your guide.  Put a little love in your heart.  And the world will be a better place for you and me.  You just wait and see.  

    To be continued...(if you wish to help end the almost uncontrolled "sport" of excessive wildlife killing, visit the site Project Coyote).

Arches National Park at night: Photo by Pedro McBride for National Geographic

*An unrelated but interesting aside was this story from Bloomberg of what happens to all those beads after Mardi Gras ends.