I read a story, a long time ago, about a land where most animals joined the dinosaur and the dodo bird on a long list of used-to-bes. Unlike these, though, the animals of this story weren't a casualty of natural disasters or imported pigs, they had been wiped out by the expanding human civilization. So too had fallen most of the forests, the old places of the world. What men learned, though, was that people are far less happy when surrounded by glass and iron and smog than they are water and mountains and clean air. And so they tried to reverse the destruction they had caused. They forged forests of metal, painted them green, but it didn't matter. But they couldn't reverse it, couldn't rebuild it. I don't remember the author, or even the title of the story, but it stuck with me.
Now, don't get me wrong. I like a good rack o' ribs or fatty hamburger as much as the next guy. Maybe more. And I enjoy my guns, and I don't think you have enough friends to take them from me. I support hunting. We are born predators. Predators are always smarter than the prey. My highschool mascot was a Logger, for cryin' out loud. I understand how important the industry is to small towns like mine, to back-country states like Idaho. But I like to think I can see the functionality and the beauty of it. I can carry my rifle through the woods one day, and my camera the next. I can sign a petition to save Idaho's back country in the morning and build shelving out of Idaho lumber products in the evening. I see what this world provides for us... no, what we take from this world, and I appreciate it. But I realize that if we take and take and take with no regard for the health of our planet, never giving anything back, we will end.
I read an article today about Mexican wolves, and a battle raging down south to keep these creatures from extinction. "'I'd really like to see them gone,' said Barbara Marks, who chairs the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association's wildlife committee and operates a cattle ranch with her husband that includes 225 acres of private property and 71,775 acres of public land. 'In the middle of the night you wake up in a cold sweat when you hear your dogs barking, wondering if something's wrong'" (Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post). I'm no stranger to these kind of statements. Even more common are they, Why should I care?s. They're just wolves, after all. Or, they're just bears. They're just rhinos! My grandmother is an outfitter in the mountains at the base of the Idaho panhandle. The recently re-released wolves in Idaho are competing for the game she makes her living from. If it were up to her, we should kill them all. A couple wolves will take down an elk, feed, and leave half a rotting carcass. Problem? Wolves rarely scavenge. They prefer fresh prey, so they constantly hunt down new food. The decreased elk population means Grandma's hunters are less likely to find prey of their own, and more likely to find wolves. That drives down prices, it drives away customers. When wolves kill a ranchers cattle, they are cutting into their overhead. When land it dedicated to the preservation of wildlife, it takes away valuable land for mining, logging, or drilling for oil. Loss of revenue, loss of jobs, loss of money, money, money.
I understand. My Grandmother is not wealthy. Many small time ranchers need every head of cattle they've got. But that animal needs it more. This will almost always be the case. Why should we care? So what if all the wolves are gone? If the bears are gone? If the buffalo are gone? Fox? Caribou? Big horned sheep? Bats? And on and on. Take a look at the endangered species list. When does our expansion, our profit, stop being more important the preservation of life on this planet. When it's us and the cockroaches? When the only animals to be found are the ones lined up for the slaughter to feed the eight, nine, ten, twenty billion mouths stacked three deep? Why should be care? Because it'd be a lonely planet, just us, and the sound of the breeze whistling through metal leaves.