No one wants to see polar bears, or pandas, become extinct. The question is, what will we do about it? It’s inspiring to realize that, even as human behavior pushes more species to the brink, many people and organizations are passionately devoted to protecting them. Even Richard Nixon thought it was important enough to pass the Endangered Species Act. We don’t really need to teach people to care. We just need to convince them to connect the dots.
— SUSAN CLAYTON
I’m constantly rewilding. It’s a never-ending process. Until very recently, and for thirty-five years, I lived in the mountains outside of Boulder, Colorado. I always felt blessed to coexist with many magnificent and inquisitive nonhuman animals, some dangerous and some not. Cougars and black bears were among my visitors. Because I had to walk down winding stairs, and about fifty feet, to get from my office to my front door, I pretty much always felt a twinge of fear, especially at night or when I knew that a potentially dangerous animal had been recently seen, heard, or smelled. The fear invigorated me and made me appreciate that my home was situated in someone else’s home, and I had better respect their presence. At any time they chose, I could wear out my welcome. It’s the same sort of fear I felt in the Amboseli at Cynthia Moss’s elephant camp when a lion rubbed against the outside of the tent when I was sleeping and pushed his body into my cot. But it’s rather different from the fear and tension I have felt walking down a dark street in a bad part of a town. It is also different from the fear I have felt with a dog whose intentions I could not read. In my experience with a wide variety of wild animals, I’ve found them to be mostly indifferent to my presence, or they simply avoid me. But because these animals are wild, you never know what may happen if they decide I’m an intrusive or annoying “pest.”
On many nights, I heard local animals trying to get onto my gated deck, gated because of them. One morning I noticed that a mother bear and her two cubs had succeeded in breaking the latch that held the gate closed. But most often, my brief commute between home and work involved less frightful encounters. I’d often see red foxes, chipmunks, squirrels, various birds, lizards, snakes, insects, and spiders, and I was always rejuvenated by the beautiful vegetation that surrounded my home. All of these feelings — of beauty and fear, of joy, wonder, and unpredictability — kept me in touch and attuned with the world where I chose to live, with who I was, and with who my nonhuman neighbors were. This was part of my ongoing personal rewilding.
Though my fears were usually niggling, and they never overcame my wonder, I knew that my anxieties were not unfounded. As I was writing an early draft of this chapter, a handsome male bobcat came to my office door, stared in, and walked off and peed, totally unfettered. Soon after I almost tripped over a red fox who was sniffing where the bobcat had peed. On three occasions I wound up so close to a cougar I could have shaken paws with him. One hot summer day, I almost tripped over a large male as I was walking backward and telling a neighbor to watch out for the feline predator. When I turned to walk home, I could smell the cougar’s breath and hear his panting, and his piercing eyes seemed to ask, “What in the world are you doing?”
Once, as I was getting ready to leave for the airport, a huge male black bear camped out on my deck and sat on the cover of my hot tub. He wouldn’t leave, despite my nice requests and reasonable explanation that he was making me late for my flight. Later, when I returned home from my trip, there was a large pile of bear poop right at my front door. In June 2012, as I was riding my bicycle up the steep dirt road to my house, I was chased by a young bear cub, who surely could have caught me, but chose instead to stop chasing me about ten feet from my car. I was genuinely scared, but after my heart rate and breathing returned to normal, I honestly thought he was playing with me. Perhaps he was letting me know who was boss of our shared mountainside. Two months later, I met him once again when he began hanging out near my office. We agreed to coexist but nothing more. A red fox also once nipped at my heels as I rode, and during a 2010 cycling race, a black bear casually strolled right in front of me, sauntered across the road, and sat down. Naturally, I stopped, ceded him the right of way and chose to enjoy this unexpected reprieve from my arduous cycling up a 12-percent grade.
On a number of occasions, the first occurring in October 2011, the female black bear who had broken onto my deck also walked across my roof right above my bedroom in the middle of the night. She was no stranger to the neighborhood. I’d seen her often with her two cubs, and I’m sure she knew me and my habits well. The first time she sauntered back and forth across the skylight over my bed, I realized that this was not a good situation for either of us. The bear would have been just as unhappy as I if she fell through! I watched her silhouette, listened to her thumping about here and there, and planned an escape route, but there really was none. So I kept quiet, prayed the skylight would hold, and soon she was gone. The next times she came back, I was much more relaxed about her presence above me.
Do I feel lucky to have met these wonderful beings? Yes, indeed! Does that make me want to meet these amazing nonhuman beasts up front and personal again? Nope. Each time, I was lucky to get away unscathed, and I know it. But I also recognize that I made the choice to move into their living rooms in the first place, and I did so without their invitation. This feeling humbles me.
There’s nothing better than a safe and peaceful home. That’s what I want and need, and it’s what other animals want and need. I liked to think of my mountain home and the beautiful land surrounding it as one of many peaceable kingdoms fostering heartfelt, compassionate coexistence. Animals want and need to live in peace and to feel safe, just like we do.
Of course, my life in the mountains had the usual ups and downs, but I never took my good fortune for granted. Every morning, when I woke up, I felt blessed. Animals abounded around my home because it was right in the middle of theirs. Why should I resent their presence, or my own occasional feelings of fear and of being an intruder? For my nonhuman neighbors, that’s who I was — some guy who had invaded and now shared their home. This is true, to greater and lesser degrees, for all of us, no matter where we live. Nonhumans animals occupied the land before humans moved in, and nonhuman animals will continue to occupy the land, as they are able and as suits their own needs and survival. This includes, as it always has, the spaces in and around our own homes, towns, highways, airports, parks, farms, and so on. Why should animals have to move or be moved — or be killed, as they often are — because we find their presence a nuisance? Who are we to invade their homes and then tell them they have no right to live there anymore, and no right even to life?
As I was writing one morning, a red fox ran in front of my office window, stopped, peered in, and trotted off. He sort of paid attention to a chipmunk who was perched on a rock, but he seemed to realize that chasing this small rodent wasn’t worth it — a mere appetizer — too small, too quick, and not enough calories to justify the effort. This male fox came by a lot, and I recognized him — he has a dark spot on his left hip. I have always wondered what he thought about me, seeing me in the same place at the same time pretty much every day. He wasn’t afraid of me, nor I him, and occasionally I would walk outside, and he would come to within a few feet of me and sit down. I often spoke to him, and he would just sit there, patiently listening, saying little other than slowly sweeping his tail back and forth on the ground. One day I read to him what I’d been writing, and he seemed utterly bored.
Once he rolled over on his back as if asking me to rub his stomach. Of course, I would never do that. The fox was not my pet, and no good would come to him within his wild life by acclimating to my presence to that degree. I like to think we became friends, but I use the word loosely; the idea is perhaps self-serving. All I can say is that we certainly acted in a friendly manner, but there remained an unbridgeable distance between us; we were two very different animals with very different needs. I had moved into his ancestors’ home years ago after someone built the house in which I lived, redecorating nature and his living room. He and the many other animals in the mountains always brought a smile to my face, but I never forgot that this was their home first. And I hope I was able to act in ways that kept their home a safe and peaceful place to live. This is the main goal rewilding strives for.
As we rewild our hearts, one of the most important questions we face is what to do with the heartfelt healing concern for nature we are developing. As we build corridors of coexistence and compassion inside ourselves, how do we in real, practical ways “rewild the wild”? What can we do to coexist more peacefully and compassionately? What are the best ways to solve our many serious ecological and environmental problems? This chapter looks at several major areas that demand our attention and where rewilding is most needed. However, rather than debate specific solutions, I will mostly suggest how rewilding helps us rethink the problems and come from a more compassionate and empathic perspective.
Rewilding on any scale — whether we’re discussing landscapes and biospheres or deeply personal experiences — means never ignoring nature. This is because wherever we go and wherever we live, humans are continually and inevitably redecorating nature, whether intentionally or unintentionally. All our buildings and roads, every human community, every vehicle, every energy source, affects nature and nonhuman animals. We can’t help redecorating nature, and for some it’s almost a human obsession. They can’t leave nature alone. Nor is this unrelentingly intrusion going to change. Instead, it will only get worse. There are already too many of us, and more of us are arriving every day. As I wrote in chapter 1, our ongoing population explosion is one of the biggest environmental challenges facing us.
In short, our lives always impact nature, and it is difficult to live in our demanding world and not occasionally harm nonhuman animals, as much as we might try not to. This fact should keep us humble and nonjudgmental. We simply need to agree that we all must make every effort to minimize harm whenever and however we can. As this chapter makes clear, the best solutions are always a balancing act, a compromise between sometimes conflicting or competing needs. By agreeing to minimize harm to nonhuman animals and nature, we are agreeing to listen to the “voiceless” beings all around us and to proactively include their concerns in all our decisions. Increasing our awareness of nature, in itself, is the transformative first step.
Further, agreeing to minimize harm will lead us to focus on eliminating the obvious intentional harm that is currently being done and to confront it head-on. If we focused only on harm that is deliberate, easily avoided, or unnecessarily great, we could avoid much irreversible damage and make the world a better place for all beings. When we redecorate nature without compassion, we cause innumerable serious impacts on diverse ecosystems; we kill individuals, break up families, and decimate habitats. As nature becomes distressed, that in turn impacts us. Then, too often, our “solution” to such problems is to do more killing or to dominate nature further in our efforts to again be untroubled. To break this self-destructive cycle, we must agree that a nonkilling world is more important than our own uninterrupted comfort.
Knowing that other animals are sentient beings who experience unbounded joy and deep pain and suffering should help us care about what happens to them. This knowledge should help inspire us to want to minimize harm, though often it doesn’t. Too often, we choose to remain ignorant of the many eyes watching us. Like my friend the red fox who regularly came by to say hello in the morning, animals see us, their lives matter to them, and they certainly notice when their lives are turned upside down and their homes destroyed. By rewilding our hearts, we pledge to treat all animal “visitors” as welcome sources of connection and inspiration. Minimizing harm and fostering coexistence are the default “best” choices. We need more compassion in the world. Yes, the human species leaves behind big footprints, but they can be footprints of compassion. There will always be trade-offs in deciding who and what to save and how to coexist. The tough questions facing us are incredibly difficult and frustrating. They ask each of us to think deeply and do the best we can for all beings.
Rewilding is an attitude. It’s also a guide for action. As a social movement, it needs to be proactive, positive, persistent, patient, peaceful, practical, powerful, and passionate — which I call the eight Ps of rewilding. Because it comes from deep in our heart, the rewilding movement will be contagious and long-lasting and radiate far and wide. If we keep these eight principles in mind as we engage one another and wrestle with difficult problems, no one should feel threatened or left out. These are the principles that guide my own perspective on the issues in this chapter.
All of these attributes are interrelated and support each other. I’ve already discussed the need to be proactive. We can’t wait for problems to get worse or for all the scientific data to be collected; we can’t wait for a better, more convenient moment to act. We must act now with the information and understandings and abilities we have.
In addition to being proactive, we need to be positive and exit the stifling quagmire and vortex of negativity once and for all. Being positive and peaceful are extremely important, for many reasons. We need to talk up successes. Negativity is a time and energy bandit that thoroughly depletes us. We don’t get anywhere dwelling in anguish, sorrow, pessimism, or despair. In a taxicab in Vancouver, British Columbia, I saw a sign in front of a church that really resonated with me. It read, “Make the most of the best and the least of the worst.” Amen.
We also need to embody in ourselves the positive vision we hope to realize: a better future for all animals and our planet as a whole. If we present a negative picture, or act in negative ways, we can hardly expect others, especially those who remain unsure or unconvinced, to join us or do much at all. As we learn more and talk more as a society, I truly believe that we will be able to succeed in many of our attempts to right the numerous wrongs and bring more compassion, peace, and harmony to our world.
Plus, we know that being positive and hopeful are important for getting people to care and to act. Concentrating on successes, on what works, is important for overcoming hopelessness. For example, it has been suggested that positive media — showing an elephant with her offspring — is more effective in getting people to right a wrong, such as elephant poaching, than negative images showing animals being violently tortured, such as elephants who have had their tusks ripped away. Scaring and shaming people does not work and can indeed backfire.
Almost by definition, rewilding means being open to the perspectives of all the parties impacted by a situation; it means bringing different points of view to the table, including all human points of view. As everyone’s needs are shared, and impacts are seen, it should be impossible to be objective, indifferent, or complacent. Passion about our endangered ecosystems, about the well-being of nonhuman animals, and about our own welfare should help us get past indifference or a reluctance to act. As we articulate humanity’s deadly and wide-ranging effects, passionate caring will help move us to make changes and avoid more harm. It astounds me that anyone could be indifferent when we are such an intimate part of the equation of what is happening right in front of our eyes and inside our hearts.
We also need to be persistent and stick like glue to our beliefs and ethical principles. Debate, differing opinions, and compromise are to be expected, but we can’t give up or give in completely. By remaining positively passionate, by appealing to compassion with compassion — by “being nice” to those we disagree with, and talking with, not to or at, others — we can make the future better than the past. In this sense, if we think we are powerless, we will likely give up when things get tough. But we also need to persist by insisting on solutions that are themselves practical and powerful. Any solutions need to be sufficiently pragmatic and meaningful to make a difference.
Finally, patience may not seem like a virtue in these troubled times, but it surely is. There can be long time lags between taking action and seeing the effects. Getting consensus always seems to take too long, and compromises can sometimes feel like discouraging half-measures. Hopefully, we all agree that our troubled and wounded world needs a lot of compassionate healing right now, not when it’s convenient. Ideally, we all share a compelling sense of urgency. But patience, taking time to smell the roses and to consider our actions carefully, is how we stay sane and maintain the energy to keep rewilding effectively each and every day.
Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, argues we need a “humane economy,” one that makes compassion and caring profitable. He correctly notes that cruelty is not only a moral problem but an economic problem as well. While Pacelle focuses on the lives of individual animals, others make a similar economic argument to view “conservation as investment.” They have argued that in order to save the natural world from destruction, we need to put a cash value on it. Thus, one strategy for rewilding our business-oriented modern world is to rewild the bottom line, to rewild economics.
For instance, in an essay in New Scientist called “Costing the Earth,” Fred Pearce writes:
Welcome to the weird world of green economics, in which the value of ecosystems is being reduced — or elevated, depending on your perspective — to a matter of dollars, in a bid to save them from destruction. It makes a certain intuitive sense. Economics and ecology are intimately related, and not just in name (the “eco” in both has the same Greek root, oikos, or “house”). All economic activity is dependent on the environment: what would the timber trade be without forests, or fisheries without fish? And those are just some of the direct connections. Without a stable climate, water to drink and air to breathe, there would be no economy at all. But at present, the environmental factors that keep economies ticking over are almost entirely absent from economics itself. If they are acknowledged, it is as “externalities” that are not reflected in the prices of goods and services. A classic example is greenhouse gases: emitters emit them for free, and wider society picks up the tab. . . . Perhaps green economics is the least bad tool we have.
Obviously, you can’t really put a price tag on nature. However, because so much of what we do or don’t do comes down to money, it’s a useful exercise that could form the basis of decisions that are made for different species and different problems. The price-tag approach might get us to reconsider our current choices by translating the “costs” and “benefits” of those choices into equivalent dollars and cents. By measuring the income of the businesses, like tourism, that rely on wilderness, we can quantify a relative economic value of wilderness itself. In the New Scientist, Pearce continues, “The biggest study yet, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), tried to value a range of important ecosystems. Coral reefs came out on top, worth up to $1.2 million per hectare per year, largely derived from tourism. The Amazon rainforest was reckoned to be worth between $6.5 and $13 billion a year as a carbon store alone. Even humble grasslands can be worth thousands of dollars per hectare, as protectors of water supplies and carbon stores. The TEEB study did not tell ecologists anything new, but it translated their knowledge into a metric that economists — and hopefully policymakers — can understand.”
However, this economic line of reasoning is limited. As Thomas Berry noted, valuing nature for its human utility, and its monetary worth, only further objectifies the world. This is not rewilding. Nature and nonhuman animals have an intrinsic value that defies cost-benefit analysis, the same way we don’t put a price on human life.
But also, appeals to economics often fall short of the sort of moral messages that get individuals to act. There are actions that are simply wrong no matter the monetary cost — causing intentional harm to animals, for example, and destroying their homes because it benefits us with little or no regard of the harm it causes them.
A study by researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands showed that moral messages can get people “to go green,” but they must appeal to the specific moral concerns of the individuals involved. The essay noted, “Previous research has suggested that morality can be divided into five main areas: harm and care, fairness and reciprocity, group loyalty, authority and respect, and purity and sanctity. Liberals place a higher priority on the first two areas than conservatives do, while conservatives are more likely than liberals to consider the last three areas important.”
In other words, ethics, not money, typically inspires people to take action, and no single ethical reason moves everyone. This is why it’s important to listen to, and ideally accommodate, everyone’s needs and perspectives in any given situation. From a societal, business, or public policy perspective, putting a price on nature and nonhuman animals could be useful as a method of comparison, but economic arguments are probably much less persuasive on a personal level, especially when someone’s profession or livelihood is at stake. For instance, government programs (such as in Sweden) that financially reimburse ranchers for livestock losses due to predators can sometimes persuade ranchers to tolerate those predators, rather than kill them, but not always. Money alone is not always an adequate incentive.
Compassionate conservation has become a popular new phrase and mind-set over the past few years, one that has increasingly informed global efforts to conserve species and restore ecosystems. Compassionate conservation’s central premise is that every individual animal’s life counts, and so our attempts to repair ecological damage or save a certain species shouldn’t, by design or accident, sacrifice or negatively impact even more life in the process.
In many ways, compassionate conservation represents exactly what rewilding our hearts is all about. It embraces compassion as an essential social value, one that should inspire us to right many of the wrongs for which we’re responsible and one that should also guide all the decisions we make as we do. However, while it is impossible to argue against being compassionate, this approach presents us with some hard questions and may lead to some counterintuitive answers. What conservationists take to be gospel may need to be reexamined, and we may need to accept the limits of what humans can do, even if we think we have nature’s best interests in mind and heart.
Whether we like it or not, these are some of the questions we need to ask, some of which undermine the very premise of conservation, such as: Should we even try to re-create or restore ecosystems when we really don’t know how to accomplish it? Is a hands-off strategy more compassionate than trying to fix everything that’s wrong? If we accept that we’re an integral part of nature — “just one of the group,” as ecopsychologist David Abram said in a recent talk, one doing very good and very bad things — should we just let ecosystems and their animal inhabitants evolve however it goes? Is it okay to kill some animals in the name of conservation or research — in other words, trading off individuals for the good of their own or other species or for ecosystem integrity? If so, to what degree? Should we focus our efforts on what seem to be the more soluble problems, even if these aren’t the biggest problems? When do we pull the plug and admit defeat? Is it more compassionate to let some species go rather than try to do too much and spread ourselves and our resources too thin? How do we rebuild and adjust our human communities in order to create and maintain unobstructed natural corridors that allow species to revive? How can researchers, agencies, and policymakers cross disciplines and work together? When would animals and ecosystems be better without us?
For instance, with so many species currently endangered, we need to carefully consider which species we choose to save. Most often we focus on highly charismatic species, like pandas and polar bears, but in truth, these species often provide very little ecological value, and they are sometimes too far gone to have a chance of rebounding to viable populations without massive and ongoing human efforts. On the other hand, as we’ve seen, amphibians are disappearing at unprecedented and staggering rates, and their loss is bad not only for them but also for landscapes and humans. Conservationist Elizabeth Bennett points out that we really have not been very successful with protecting charismatic species, which leaves little hope for those who aren’t eye-catching. Even young people, one report said, “place a higher priority on protecting colorful, showy critters than animals that blend into their surroundings.”
Instead of focusing on species that appeal to us, shouldn’t we focus on those dwindling species that are more or most important to the integrity of ecosystems overall? Consider honeybees. These amazing animals are responsible for pollinating seven of the world’s ten most important crops, but a single bee can contain twenty-five different agrochemicals. Renowned conservation biologist Edward O. Wilson once said, “If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” Given this, should we put our limited resources into saving honeybees and amphibians and let wolves go if wolves can’t survive on their own? As the amounts of time, energy, and money are strained as the number of problems grow, we’re going to have to factor in more seriously the overall ecological importance of different species and make decisions that may favor animals about whom most people don’t think or even know exist.
Obviously, we need to be selective about which species we choose to save and which ecosystems we choose to fix. This alone raises moral issues. However, I believe we might be more successful, and in some ways more compassionate, if we put our efforts into situations that are smaller and fixable, rather than trying to manipulate nature in fundamental ways. Some efforts are truly beyond our capabilities.
In truth, one way we ignore nature is with the belief that we can control nature. Rewilding our hearts also means accepting that, as with natural selection, life evolves as it must, and in this process, some make it and some do not. This is very sad, but also very true. We cannot undo the impact the human species has already had and restore nature as it once was; we can only move forward, proceeding from the way the world is right now. More and more researchers agree. In a 2011 survey, which questioned 583 conservation scientists, 60 percent said that criteria should be established for deciding which species to abandon in order to focus on saving others. Ninety-nine percent agreed that a serious loss of biodiversity is “likely, very likely, or virtually certain.”
There is no avoiding further species loss. I wish this weren’t so. Current strategies, sadly, were developed decades ago, before world populations and global consumption had skyrocketed.
As for how to go about recovering the species we do choose to save, a good approach is modeled by researchers working in Asia, who take what’s called the Three Rs approach. The Three Rs are recognition, responsibility, and recovery, and the process entails recognizing the problem, taking responsibility for solving it, and putting species back on the path to recovery. Successful reintroductions, also called repatriations, include putting wolves back into the Yellowstone National Park ecosystem, golden-lion tamarins into Brazilian forests, black bears into the forests of Missouri, and red kites to areas of England. However, there are costs to these programs, as individual animals wind up dying “for the good of their species.” A recent review of reintroduction studies involving captive animals showed that only about 30 percent of reintroduced animals survive. Humans are responsible for more than one-half the deaths due to shootings or car accidents. Of course, a lot hangs on the word “successful.” If success is defined as increasing the number of animals who now live in habitats typical of their species, then there are some successes, but there also are significant failures.
Yet, methods are as important as results if the ethics of compassionate conservation are to guide us. My colleague Jessica Pierce stresses we need “ethics with teeth.” That is, if recovering one species means killing a different species, we need to proceed very cautiously and perhaps even put such efforts on hold. For example, an effort to save endangered black-footed ferrets involves breeding and raising golden hamsters solely so they can be killed by the ferrets as practice prey. Over a few years, more than seven thousand hamsters were raised and killed only to serve as prey for captive-born ferrets. Is this a worthwhile trade-off? I don’t think so, particularly since the effort was conducted without evidence that this practice hunting would translate in the wild or even that the ferrets would survive once they were reintroduced.
I don’t pretend that these choices are obvious, simple, or even enjoyable. Yet I feel strongly that the imperative to do no harm should always come first, and it should make us cautious about actively trading one species for another, exchanging one set of lives we don’t value for others we regard more fondly. History tells us it is a slippery slope when we sacrifice humane values for the common good. The real world demands that we come to terms with incredibly difficult and challenging situations, most of which we’ve created, and sometimes we must humbly accept that there is no solution that doesn’t cause more harm in the process.
One major reason humans preserve nature and wilderness, such as in state and national parks, is so that we can enjoy it. This positive impulse is central to personal rewilding, and visiting nature takes many forms. Some take walks or hikes in local woods for daily refreshment. Some take holidays to spectacular sights and landscapes, like Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon, the Serengeti, Antarctica, and the Amazon. Some want to observe legendary animals in the wild, like elephants, penguins, bison, moose, bighorn sheep, and perhaps reintroduced wolves. Some spend lots of money to visit plush ecolodges, while others prefer rough outdoor adventures like rafting, mountain biking, and climbing. Some also hunt and fish; for them, enjoying nature also involves killing other animals.
Perhaps obviously, wildlife tourism impacts the wildlife and ecosystems being visited, though impacts vary depending on what people do. In this way, preserving nature for our benefit becomes another difficult topic that confronts several inherent contradictions when it comes to rewilding. First of all, if by rewilding our hearts we are in part attempting to lessen our impact on nature and nonhumans animals, then we should lessen our intrusions into nature. We should leave fewer actual footprints. And yet visiting nature, immersing ourselves in it, is crucial to what we most want, a deep and intimate connection to nature and nonhuman animals.
What to do? Continue to visit nature, but make a personal pledge to “leave no trace behind,” as the slogan goes. We should dedicate ourselves to the least-impactful activities, even if that means lessening or forgoing activities we enjoy — like four-wheeling and hunting. This is one area where millions of individual choices can add up to a huge difference for wilderness and wildlife.
Then, looking at the bigger picture, we need to weigh the pros and cons of various types of wildlife tourism, and public land policy, and consider changes that improve our caretaking in the natural areas we have already set aside. This is a thorny topic that could be a whole book unto itself, and I can only touch on the main issues briefly.
On the one hand, ecotourism can have positive economic benefits that help preserve wilderness and save wildlife. Profits from tourism provide a financial incentive for local communities to conserve, rather than use or exploit, nature. In a very thoughtful 2012 essay, Ralf Buckley, who directs the International Centre for Tourism Research at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, notes that “many endangered species now rely to a startling degree” on wildlife tourism. Indeed, ecotourism has saved a number of populations of great apes, such as the mountain gorillas of the Virunga Volcanoes and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. Ecotourism has also been implicated in saving elephants in northern Kenya, as former poachers change their ways to protect these magnificent animals who attract people to their country — people who spend a good deal of money taking safaris to see the local wildlife. These sorts of programs are essential.
In a similar vein, some people argue that hunting animals has economic advantages, since hunters can spend a great deal of money on equipment, state fees, hiring outfitters, and so on. My home state of Colorado has a touchy-feely program called “hug a hunter” that encourages state residents to show appreciation for hunters and anglers because of their economic impact, which partly funds wildlife programs. However, in a very interesting and novel study, the Centre for Integral Economics analyzed revenues derived from British Columbia’s grizzly bear resource. They found that grizzly bear viewing is conservatively worth $6.1 million annually in British Columbia, whereas hunting grizzlies brought in only half as much. The argument to maintain the hunt as an economic benefit when compared to ecotourism was not supported. Furthermore, legalizing the hunting of predators as a conservation strategy — on the theory that if hunters are allowed to kill a limited number of predators they will help conserve the species generally — actually has been shown to backfire, so it’s wrong to conclude that sport hunters are “valuable partners in conservation.”
As I mention above, in some situations, assigning cash values to animals and ecosystems will improve caring and compassion by giving us a financial incentive; we can quantify how peaceful coexistence is in our immediate self-interest. And yet, as I say, economics is a poor excuse for making moral choices. If we value wildlife and want to preserve it, then that is in conflict with killing wildlife for sport or enjoyment. Sometimes, rewilding our hearts will entail a “cost” to us. We may need to protect nature even when it’s not financially advantageous or even when it means giving up activities we enjoy and once allowed ourselves to do freely.
Over the years, I’ve spoken with a lot of hunters and outfitters about the ethics and economics of hunting. Most of the time, hunters are very interested to exchange views and very respectful of my perspective, though I never know if any of them change their ways because of our talks. However, one argument usually gets hunters to stop and think. I remind them that their hobby, or their livelihood, causes pain and suffering by intentionally killing animals who have rich and deep emotional lives and who leave behind friends and families. Then, I ask the person if they would hunt and kill their own dog. “Of course not!” they usually respond with incredulity. But in the end, a dog and the wild animals people hunt are not all that different, except that we already love our dogs.
One outfitter I met in Wyoming made a principled distinction in his work. He said he would not bait grizzly bears at dumpsters for “rich East Coasters to shoot” if they were not able to find and kill a wild bear. While I wish he’d change his profession, this showed a limit to how much he would manipulate nature solely for someone’s enjoyment. Meanwhile, another outfitter said he felt he was “rewilding” his clients, who connected with nature while hunting. Then he laughed and asked me if I would like to see him go out of his sort of “rewilding” business.
Personally? Yes. But I understand that he has to make a living, and I agree that some hunters love nature passionately and work hard to protect it, and not solely because they want to hunt in it. Also, I don’t expect everyone to agree with my views. But my hope is that outfitters, hunters, and anyone who harms nature as part of their “enjoyment” of nature will consider lessening those activities and finding alternatives. Hunting and fishing may help some to rewild, but it is not the sort of rewilding I support because I feel we should do all we can not to harm or kill other animals or trespass into and destroy their homes. Rewilding our hearts should help to keep other animals safe, alive, and thriving, and keep intact the various landscapes and homes in which they live.
Earlier, I mentioned the ecological rewilding program called the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. One of the most high-profile and controversial efforts of Y2Y has involved reintroducing wolves into portions of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, where they once predominated. Y2Y did this knowing that more wolves would mean more conflicts with the region’s ranchers. In fact, historically, the eradication of wolves was often presented as an economic necessity, and nothing today has changed the issue’s basic dynamics. If ranchers gather docile cattle within scalable fences, wolves will help themselves to an easy meal.
I once received a very thoughtful email from a reader on this issue that captured the contradictions and conflicts well:
As a resident of Montana I’ve often been confronted with the controversy of hunting wolves. Although it seems like it may be inhumane, how can we justify killing livestock for a burger more so than killing wolves to provide for your family? The majority of Montana is ranchland. There’s not a community you can visit that isn’t surrounded by ranches, filled with livestock, which is basically the sole income of most of the families here. The wolves have been a problem for a long time, especially in this area, because they mercilessly kill livestock, and it can eventually financially destroy any family. . . . No, we should not go around killing every wolf that lives. But in moderation, it is a great solution. Humans have been hunting animals since the beginning of time for survival. This is simply a matter of such. . . . The writer of this article . . . must consider our point of view and how it affects us, not just the urban side of life. With a more educated look at the case, it’s plain to see that it’s simply a means of survival.
In two significant ways, the writer and I agree. First, I see no moral difference between killing cows for us to eat and killing wolves and other predators so they don’t eat the cows before us. Either way, animals suffer. If we did not eat cows — or if we ate them far less often so that there were far fewer, smaller, and better-protected ranches — then this problem would mostly solve itself. However, I also agree that the welfare of the people who run ranches is important. Any ecological effort that tries to preserve wildlife in ways that will inevitably harm people isn’t going to be successful. This highlights why ecology, economics, and society often go hand in hand. Protecting wolves while undermining human communities is not compassionate rewilding.
The main ways I differ with the writer are with his defense of more killing as the main solution and with his vilification of wolves as “merciless.” Wolves are in fact capable of tremendous caring and mercy, and it’s simply presumptive and self-centered to interpret the same act — eating cows to survive — as acceptable for one predator but not for another. Both humans and wolves are primarily concerned with their own survival, and finding humane, nonkilling solutions to resource conflicts often must start by recognizing this. Furthermore, wolves are naturally evolved predators, and they have no choice as to their meal plan. They also are not moral agents and should not be held ethically accountable for their predatory ways.
In this situation, one partial remedy could be to offer ranchers the chance to quit ranching and pursue other sources of income or livelihoods. Given adequate financial support and training, some families might voluntarily change, thus minimizing this conflict. Ranching is not inevitable; it’s a choice. Obviously, many ranchers enjoy and prefer ranching, so for them the question becomes: In what ways can cows be protected other than by killing predators?
Several, as it turns out. One inspirational approach has been developed by a Kenyan teen named Richard Turere. Living in lion country and having to protect his family’s cattle from being killed by these and other predators, this young Maasai created “lion lights” to keep predators away from livestock. Lion lights consist of outward-facing, flashing LED bulbs powered by an old car battery. As the lights flicker on and off, the lions are fooled into thinking a human is around. Richard is proud that he did this on his own, and in 2013, he was invited to give a very prestigious TED talk about it.
Other examples of ways to scare or ward off potential predators include the use of guard dogs and flagging (fladry) — that is, attaching bright-colored flags to wire fences. Simply cleaning up garbage and animal carcasses around farms and ranches also works, and this is something we’ve known for more than forty years.
Further, in addition to better protecting livestock, changing people’s attitudes toward predators and increasing their tolerance of them is an essential aspect of any effort to find humane solutions. Our feelings about predators vary a great deal and usually depend on a range of social and cultural factors. As mentioned above, sometimes financially reimbursing ranchers for livestock losses is enough to dissuade them from killing predators, but sometimes not. Sometimes more education about the ecological benefits of predators helps, and sometimes the most important factor is perceived social norms. Whether others we know approve or disapprove of killing makes a big difference in our behavior. As conservation biologists Adrian Treves and Jeremy Bruskotter rightly argue, we need much more research to determine the best mix of incentives in various situations, rather than “the haphazard patchwork of trial and error that has in many cases characterized predator conservation efforts.”
As I’ve mentioned, human well-being in general is enhanced by exposure to nature. According to cognitive scientist Art Markman, research shows that people who live near parks experience “lower levels of mental distress and higher levels of well-being” than those who do not. So one ongoing effort, which we need to expand, is incorporating more of nature within our suburbs, towns, and cities. In “biophilic cities,” urban landscapes and “built environments” are redesigned and rewilded so that they include more natural areas and take practical measures to protect wildlife from human impacts. People are also working hard to rewild much larger areas, such as with the Rewilding Europe Project.
I have had the pleasure of working with Timothy Beatley, Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, to get animals on the agenda of people responsible for developing and implementing city planning, so that we can expand our urban compassion footprint. Our collaboration is a good example of an unlikely partnership. I first met Tim when he came to Boulder to give a talk in the School of Environmental Design at the University of Colorado, and it was clear that we had strongly overlapping interests. We both wanted to bring animals back into the lives of people who might not have much contact with them because of where they live. We both feel people have an ethical duty to better understand the impacts of community development, design, and planning on animals. Plus, a number of effective strategies and tools already exist for creating and improving human-animal coexistence. Major cities where animals are being nicely incorporated into more-hospitable urban landscapes include Vancouver, Toronto, Amsterdam, and Chicago. I am proud to live in Boulder, Colorado, a truly biophilic city, which has sixty-three urban community parks, neighborhood parks, and pocket parks, along with 263 miles of multiuse hiking and biking paths.
Biophilic cities incorporate a variety of approaches: building green rooftops and green walls, planting native vegetation around homes and buildings, reducing the spatial footprint of buildings, implementing nighttime lights-out campaigns, restricting the use of highly reflective glass and glass facades that disorient birds, enforcing noise restrictions, and developing and maintaining nature corridors where human and nonhuman animals can freely mingle. All these efforts make a significant difference. Toronto has been identified as one of the world’s most deadly cities for birds. The Fatal Light Awareness Program, according to the New York Times, “estimates that one million to nine million birds die every year from impact with buildings in the Toronto area. The group’s founder once single-handedly recovered about 500 dead birds in one morning.” Indeed, it’s been estimated that 100 million to one billion birds may be killed by collisions with glass windows annually in the United States. We also know that “sky glow” from artificial city lights can disrupt activity cycles of wild animals, and noisy machines can make it difficult for bats to hear the footsteps of their prey, which can lead to nutritional stress.
By taking into account the lives of nonhuman animals within the context of our cities, we can reconnect with many different aspects of nature and rewild our hearts. David Johns, who teaches politics and law at Portland State University, argues convincingly, “There is no substitute for reimmersing people in the world that gave us birth.” However, rewilding our cities and neighborhoods can also lead to conflicts. Like the stories I tell that open this chapter, coexisting with animals means accommodating their presence. Sometimes they can be a nuisance to us, and sometimes we might feel afraid if the animal in question is a fellow predator.
For instance, a 2012 news story titled “Wolves and Mountain Lions ‘Poised to Invade Densely Populated Cities in the United States’” once caught my eye. As an expert on carnivore behavior, I was shocked by this headline. The story was deliberately alarmist, playing off of human fears to get attention. In itself, this wasn’t so surprising; as I discuss in chapter 4, the media often feed our anxieties about animals and misrepresent them in sensational ways. Yet the story’s opening claim, that “wolves and mountain lions could soon be a more common sight in densely populated cities,” was supported by a number of scientists, wildlife managers, and animal control officers.
This is, simply put, fear-mongering, and it works because people genuinely fear large predators. When it comes to rewilding our cities, we need to be self-aware of our own emotions and projections; we need to take responsibility for them and put them aside. In part, we do that by accepting that coexisting with wild animals can be unpredictable, and so we need to be alert and prepared for potential encounters. We also ease our fears by understanding wild animals better, including their habits and needs. Scientists in particular need to refrain from making exaggerated, alarmist, and unsubstantiated claims that aren’t supported by data.
By rewilding our cities and suburbs, will we suddenly find “predators at our doorstep”? No, not in the sensationalist way that phrase is often used — as if animals were just waiting for us to let down our guard and attack. But in fact, the recovery of wild predators within urban environments is a rare and remarkable success story, and if anything, these animals are victims of their own success (see Nature Wars, by Jim Sterba). So, as part of rewilding ourselves and our hearts, we need to embrace the animals with whom we share space and time and, occasionally, change our ways to coexist successfully. This is one way we indicate our appreciation for wildlife and actively care about what happens to them and their families and friends. Sometimes, as the stories I tell at the start of the chapter indicate, we need to be wary; sometimes we may be inconvenienced. What is no longer an option is to choose to ignore nature, nor can we continue to blame wild animals for problems that arise from our own ignorance and fears. I have often asked realtors to be up front with people when showing them homes or lots where wild animals live. As Timothy Egan notes in a discussion of the dangers of going out into nature, in this case Grand Teton National Park, “Sometimes the bear gets you.” If we don’t want our cities to be walled human prisons, we must accept the calculated risks of coexistence — we can build communities that allow space for animals and take reasonable precautions to keep ourselves safe. We can’t control everything, but we can acknowledge that animals aren’t to blame for behaving as the beings they are.
I fully understand why it is difficult to be optimistic given the numerous and daunting ecological challenges with which we are faced. But there are unexpected victories that help us keep our dreams alive. For example, in April 2011, Bolivia announced it would grant all nature equal rights to humans. Among the eleven rights it names are the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right not to have their cellular structure modified or genetically altered. In 2012, Colombia banned the illegal trade of night monkeys, and Costa Rica banned sport hunting, the first Latin American country to do so.
I am also continually inspired and motivated by the people I meet when I travel. I travel a lot, and in itself, traveling is no fun. Regardless of the inconveniences, I keep doing it because I always meet people who really care about what’s happening in and to the only planet on which we live. These people inspire me to keep going and fighting on behalf of nature and wildlife. I really mean this. No matter where I go, there is always someone, usually more than one person, who is trying to reduce cruelty and to make the world a better place for all beings, human and nonhuman. Some of these people are well-known, dedicated activists, but most are everyday people or folks I would never expect to care like they do, and I’d like to end this chapter by presenting a sampling of them. It’s important, really essential, to know that every single individual counts and to realize there are unsung, unheralded heroes all over the world. We need all the people we can to rewild our hearts and to expand our compassion footprint.
For instance, take Howard Wang, who works at the Moon Bear Rescue Centre outside of Chengdu, China, where I regularly visit. Moon Bear rescues bears who have been horrifically abused on farms that serve China’s bear-bile industry. To quote Jill Robinson, founder and CEO of Animals Asia, the organization that runs the rescue center:
Howard has worked here since 2000 and was the very first bear worker we employed. He has expertly risen through the ranks and is now one of our three Senior Bear Managers. He loves the bears and life here with a passion — living on site and throwing himself into every duty — many far beyond what he is actually employed to do. He supervises bear teams and houses and helps to look after over 160 bears. When the earthquake struck in May 2008, he joined us on trips to help the Red Cross in their work — initially helping people, to the point where we had gained government trust and were then able to help the dogs and cats. We rescued over one hundred dogs and several cats — and funded their stay in a local animal shelter until the earthquake victims had rebuilt their lives and homes and were able to take their loving family members back.
Howard also said the most beautiful thing one day about the bears — that he was joined to them by a silver thread. I love his smile, too — it radiates love for the bears every day and illustrates just how much people here in China care about protecting and respecting both wild and domestic species.
I agree with everything Jill wrote. Whenever I see Howard, his contagious smile radiates warmth and says everything is working out just fine. We need more Howards.
Once, when I was flying to Chengdu in June 2011 to visit the Moon Bear Rescue Centre, I met a Chinese businessman who, on his own admission, “never spends a second wondering or worrying about the plight of animals and Earth.” During our fourteen-hour flight, we had some nice chats, and I think I convinced him that he should care about what we’re doing to animals and Earth. Gladly, he told me his children care, and they ask him to be more concerned. He wasn’t a “bad guy,” but like many people, he was too busy doing other things — like making money to care for his family and developing his business — to worry about the very things that I think and worry about every second of my waking days. However, as we discussed the difference between my vegan airplane meal and his meat-filled one, he agreed that my meal was probably better and better for him. Many others have made the same remark.
Spreading the word to others is important, since many people remain unaware of animal welfare issues, or they feel disconnected to what goes on in other parts of the world. Everyone counts, of course, and I find that many people care, but sometimes they don’t know what to do or how to get involved.
In October 2012, I gave a talk about the plight of China’s moon bears at the Louisville, Colorado, library, and I was surprised by an elderly couple sitting in the second row. They seemed to be absorbed in every word, and after I was done talking, the woman raised her hand, clearly fighting back tears, and quietly asked if there was any hope for them at all. Yes, there is, I told her. Jill Robinson and her dedicated team are fighting the bear-bile industry with all their heart and soul, and slowly but surely they are making progress. The woman, who hadn’t known about farming bears for bile, smiled and said she would become more involved in issues like this, and I gave her the information to do so. Moments like this happen all the time, and it is always so heartening.
I also often receive good news and inspirational emails from people working to make the lives of animals better. On a trip to Pullman, Washington, to speak at a fundraiser for the Whitman County Humane Society, I met many wonderful and dedicated people who, after a long day at the office, work into the night to develop this shelter. I also met some wonderful dogs in Pullman, including Lucky, Yoghurt, Monster Mash, Leon, Baxter, and Brendal. I once received an email from a young girl who wanted the world to become vegetarian and for people to stop going to circuses, and I often get emails from people looking to connect with animal organizations. These positive people willing to work on behalf of animals keep me going. Once, when I was in Almada, Portugal, giving a lecture on animal emotions, I met a woman who was hell-bent on heading to South Africa to go to the frontlines to stop the slaughter of elephants. She was well aware of the risks of such confrontations, but she said she was committed to work to save these magnificent animals.
Wonderful people also visit Boulder, where I live. In February 2012, my friend Louie Psihoyos, the Oscar-winning director of The Cove, introduced me to Leilani Münter, a race car driver with a degree in biology who is a formidable, passionate, and tireless animal and environmental activist. Leilani calls herself an “uncommon messenger,” and she is able to reach audiences to which most people would not have access. I love her mottos, “Never underestimate a vegetarian hippie chick with a race car” and “Life is short. Race hard. Live green.” We need to attract more uncommon messengers who think out of the box and who speak to those caring people outside of the mainstream animal and environmental movements.
Other uncommon messengers include Linda Tucker, who left a successful career in business to become a conservationist and who founded the Global White Lion Protection Trust. Then there is Francisco Mayoral, a poor fisherman in Baja California Sur, who now works hard to protect whales after meeting one face-to-face. And then there’s Howard Lyman, a fourth-generation Montana cattle rancher also known as the “mad cowboy,” who became a champion of vegetarian and vegan diets. These and other people are models for what can be done when we are passionate about protecting our magnificent planet.
Today, I hope I can inspire others just as others inspired me when I was young. One of my early inspirations was Barry Commoner, whom I mentioned in the introduction. Another was Michael W. Fox, with whom I worked on my doctorate degree. Like Barry, Michael was way ahead of the times in trying to get people to think deeply about the use and abuse of animals in research and other human venues. In the tradition of classical ethology, he also stressed the importance of watching in detail what animals do when they interact. These two courageous and vocal pioneers made my graduate education the breeding ground for what I have been doing for the past four decades. In many ways, as I reflect back to discussions with these and other forward-looking and “unconventional” scientists, I see the roots of my ideas about redecorating nature, our compassion footprint, and rewilding our hearts. We never truly know what seeds we plant, or how they will flourish, but with patience and care, some will. These ideas were already existing in my brain and in my heart way back then. In fact, my parents told me they were there when I was a mere three years old.