The Creatureliness of Earth

Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems, ed. by Nancy Holmes, Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2009.

What could be more important than opening wide a wilderness, since the press of human activity worldwide has been closing it off for so long? This collection of poetry focuses on wilderness as it exists in Canada, and includes verse from first pioneers to contemporary practitioners. All focus on place: the wild places that have always astounded us and that now we are losing, and the animals who share them with us.

Birds, caterpillers and big mammals appear frequently (moose and heron in particular inspire many poets), and death, danger and killing are frequent: geese are knocked out of the air by jets, and cougars violently killed dangle from the hoods of trucks. As well as their habitats (the woods and rivers) beavers and badgers, bears and bison are celebrated here, and with beauty. John Reibetanz describes the hummingbird in a poem as light a dazzle as is the bird itself, and Bliss Carmen, E.J. Pratt, and P.K. Page ignite our delight and our anxiety alike about Mother Nature.

It is interesting that what dazzled the first European explorers in Canada are the same things that dazzle us today: the lake with no name, the high land, and what poet George Johnston calls "the creatureliness of Earth". These verses call to the heart, and it will be heart, if anything, that in the end saves the planet from final human depredation. Just as does the best contemporary literary science writing for the general reader, these poems call to the finer feelings of the reader; let's just hope that there are some policy-makers in the wildlife field among them.

Olympics Update - Canada Is Owning the Odium

Even non-sports-fans among Canadians have become sports followers for the 2010 Olympics, cheering on the country's plan to win medals and "own the podium." VANOC organizers are heroically grappling with weather problems that cancel events and necessitate refunds. The volunteers are topnotch and the admin responsive to public requests. Canada is a good host to the world, but Canada is a really bad homeland for animals.

"Canada wins the gold medal for cruelty to animals‏," says PETA. It would be hard to deny it: we have the third biggest population of lab animals in the world, we have some of the cruelest, most inadequate farm animal transport regulations, we co-host the horrendous Iditarod dog sled race, we still allow leg-hold traps -- but probably we are most condemned for the bloody Atlantic seal hunt.

"Days after the Olympic flame is put out, the lives of tens of thousands of baby harp seals will be extinguished as well," PETA points out.

"Before most of these animals even get a chance to eat their first solid meal or learn how to swim, they will be shot in the head or have their skulls crushed by heavy clubs. Their mothers will be forced to witness the carnage, but they will be helpless to stop it and will cry out as their babies are killed."

There is no way to defend this hunt, yet the Harper government just keeps trying, against prevaling public sentiment. Now that Europe has said NO to odious seal hunt products, they are trying to market them in China. No doubt China will trade furs from Canada for their own blood-soaked products, such as skinned-alive reptile hides and the body parts of wild tigers and bears "farmed" in horrendous conditions.

Prime Minister Harper addressed the B.C. Legislature to tell it that now is B.C.'s moment to shine. Let's shine for compassion then, for justice toward all sentient creatures - that would be a worthwhile way to stand out. How important is it, really, for one person to reach the end of a skating race a fraction of a second sooner than another person? How sane is it to spend years of your life preparing for an event that is over in two minutes? Much more admirable are those who spend years in obscurity, fighting for the other creatures with whom humanity shares this planet. We should be cheering those people on, and we can all help out; even those who fear "extreme" animal rights groups can start by getting in touch with their local Humane Society or SPCA. There is bound to be something to support in their rich range of projects.

One wonders what the medal-winning athletes themselves think. They are beset by companies and causes that want to buy their endorsement. Maybe some of them endorse justice for animals?

Closed Containment Fish Farms As Bad As Open Net

Opposition politicians in British Columbia, as well as environmental groups, are calling for closed containment fish farms to mitigate the effects on wild salmon of the sea lice which escaped farmed salmon bring to migration routes. Alexandra Morton of www.adopt-a-fry.org writes: "farm salmon are being transported to Quadra Island for processing and a sample taken 90’ down from the plant’s effluent pipe found live lice eggs are pouring into Discovery Passage." Also: "reports keep coming to me that sea lice are out of control on salmon farms." Quadra Island, between Vancouver Island and the mainland is where Grieg Sea Foods cans their farmed salmon, but wouldn't the same problem arise with salmon transported to the Quadra Island plant from closed containment farms?

These would still require use of ever-stronger pesticides (who on earth eats this poisoned product anyway?) Morton quotes Professor Tor Einar Horsberg of the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science: "The harsh treatment that is needed to reach lice limits will lead to more resistant and multi-resistant lice. There is a dramatic development, and I'm worried how this will end."

We are all worried about what we are putting into the ocean along the west coast of Canada, poisoning the whales, other sea mammals, birds and fish with all manner of agricultural, industrial and ship-related chemicals. The whole salmon farming industry should be banned, not just open nets. In an era when people (especially in Europe) are finally waking up to the cruelty of factory farms for poultry and cattle, how can it be acceptable to crowd sensitive fish into them (quite apart from all factory farming creating a platform for the spread of disease organisms)?

Dogs and Stories: both subject and audience

Possibly Alexander McCall Smith (see the Corduroy Mansions note above) would understand the appeal for child readers, and for the author who created them, of the denizens of the "Planet of the Dogs." The canines coming from there, of all breeds, shapes and sizes, arrived on Earth because they had learned that Earth was so much in need of kindness, loyalty, trust and heroism -- the gifts that the dog nation has always given humanity. Once on Earth the dogs in the Planet of the Dogs series got caught up in heroic adventures described visually and mythically, with an instructive tone and appealing black and white illustrations, in three volumes for primary school children.

See Planet of the Dogs (Vol. 1), Castle In the Mist (Vol. 2), and Snow Valley Heroes: A Christmas Tale (Vol. 3), by Robert J. McCarty, for a good "waggy" time. (www.planetofthedogs.net)

See also www.readingwithrover.org. Planet of the Dogs is involved with this literacy enterprise: the "R.E.A.D." program in the U.S. uses Reading Education Assistance Dogs to encourage kids who are reluctant to read or who are having difficulty. Through this program kids can "pick out a book, pick out a dog" (trained for the role) and start reading aloud, feeling safe sharing the book with a polite pal who would never think of criticizing their reading style.

British book industry discovers animalit

The black and white house cat who made a habit of travelling alone by bus in England (and who was tragically run over last week) is the subject of an upcoming biography, according to The Bookseller, (Britain's book industry journal). Animal stories for adults are to some extent replacing human memoirs and biographies in popularity, say book trade watchers; Dewey the library cat was another favourite. They call this sub-genre "animalit," but of course here on animalit.ca we have been aware of its richness for a long time! Animal literature has been popular at least since the days of Aesop's Fables, and no doubt in the oral culture before that: those who drew the animals on the stone age caves of Europe would certainly have told stories about them as well.

Science, philosophy, mythology, true-fact stories -- animals appear in them all, but some of the most memorable animal characters appear in mainstream fiction. Iris Murdoch's dog characters play vital roles in her plots, and their inner worlds (their personalities and motivations) are often as meticulously analyzed as are Murdoch's human characters'. The contemporary author who best continues the tradition is Alexander McCall Smith. His "Pimlico dog" Freddie de la Haye is a major character, sympathetically portrayed, in Corduroy Mansions, which came out first as a serial in The Telegraph. The tale concerns the intersecting lives of those who live in an old mansion block of flats in a comfortable London neighbourhood. One of the residents is Freddie de la Haye, who must have descended from either Murdoch's Anax (The Green Knight) or Barkiss (Nuns and Soldiers). His inner life is probed with the same humane gentleness that McCall Smith applies to his human characters, for the dog wants the same things from life as do they: love, inclusion, security, comfort, fun, the zesty enjoyment of a good filling meal on a daily basis ... The difference is that the dog doesn't bother with all that political correctness that humans go in for, and the author as in all his books has great fun poking at everything from bankers to MP's, new age mystics to those who enforce gender equity in hiring among airport sniffer dogs.

Corduroy Mansions is l-o-l funny at regular intervals, but it is also the seamless connection between human and other-animal lives that both McCall Smith and Murdoch are so good at -- a connection of which Freddie de la Haye is puzzled that so many humans seem to go through life completely unaware.

Animals, Climate Change, and the Attack on Dr. Pachauri

Does it seem that most of the world's news and opinion media are pro-corporate and religiously fundamentalist? Desperate to discredit the International Panel on Climate Change, for business and/or ideological reasons, many in the media are grasping at icicles. They wish to divert nature-lovers from attention to human effects on nature with a lot of hoopla about the speed with which Himalayan glaciers are or aren't receeding.

The IPCC consists of hundreds of scientists and reviews thousands of research papers, and as has been the case since science began, they aren't all going to agree with each other. Science moves ahead by challenging conclusions, by contesting data. It takes much work and study for Average Citizen to comprehend the science of climate change -- the geology, oceanography, climatology, paleontology, chemistry, evolutionary biology, epidemiology, botany -- but some of the public want one easy definitive formula that explains all, sort of like what religion provides. Otherwise, such people claim, they are being "tricked." Then, they demand that top science people should resign, the latest of the condemned being Dr R Pachauri, the IPCC's Chair.

Don't do it Dr. Pachauri! He tells BBC News that he doesn't intend to, and for that we should be grateful. Pachauri takes a big-picture view of global warming, looking at how humanity fits in with and affects the biosphere. He reminds even the "greens" who only want to talk about oil and cars that there is more to a sane response to global warming than simply driving less. Pachauri looks at our relationship with other animals, especially the ones we eat. For meat eating we create inhumane factory farm behemoths and tons of atmospheric methane, and we cut down climate-stabilizing forests so as to grow animal feed. Become vegetarian, says Dr. Pachauri! No wonder he has enemies - the ranching and slaughterhouse industries make a powerful lobby, and the public has been largely brainwashed into believing they would shrivel up and collapse without steaks and ham, even though obesity and heart disease are major health threats throughout the world.

Alongside of obesity, there is also starvation and lack of water. The planet's natural resources cannot feed and shelter the 6.8 billion people already here; how will it sustain another few billion by 2050? You cannot go very far into climate change data without realizing that all problems are worsened by one factor: the pressure of human overpopulation -- the 6.8 billion consuming, building, driving, flying, manufacturing people gobbling up resources and spewing out pollution. Persons and industries committed to the dream of endless growth do not want to look at this; it's much easier to discredit climate change research by fussing about glacier measurements of four years ago.

Looking at other animals gives us special insight into climate change. The more we take over their habitats for paving and building, industry, dams and factory farms, the fewer species and ecosystems there are room for. Yet it is through natural ecosystems that Earth's atmosphere is maintained and the planet balances itself as a dynamic self-adjusting whole.

The heartening thing is that in theory, all people have to do from now on is have only one child each -- that would mean one for every two and population would decrease exponentially. It would take only a couple of generations to cut our numbers in half and to reverse the damage of the past sixty post-war, late-industrial years. What would happen if there were three billion instead of almost seven billion people on Earth? And how would that affect other animals? To look at the health of animal species is to look at the health of plants, oceans, forest and grasslands and the environment as a whole, everything in nature being tied into a single dense and varied tapestry. Half as many humans would mean:

Fish stocks and coral reefs rebounding; the whales and seals once again finding enough to eat
Half as much wilderness space being sacrificed to farming (monoculture crops)
The rebounding of biodiversity
Half as many cattle, pigs and chickens tortured in factory farming (even fewer if people go vegetarian) and commensurately fewer rivers being polluted by animal wastes
Less natural landscape being paved over (i.e. going dead). Cities would shrink: park space expand, built-over areas be reclaimed for living species
Reforestation, which would secure water-retention in the soil and the cloud-forests: the reversal of desertification
The comeback of bird species that depend on forested or meadow land
The comeback of pollinators (bees, butterflies, birds) that would in turn increase the range and density of flowering plants
Fewer cars, trains, planes spewing exhaust and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
Smaller airports, fewer runways, fewer birds killed by planes
Fewer goods being transported by exhaust-spewing trucks
Fewer goods being transported by freighters at sea -- the underwater world less filled with whale-killing engine noise and sonar
Less manufacturing required, so less mining tearing apart Earth's habitats for minerals
Less power needed for construction, industry and heating buildings: fewer rivers dammed, oil wells drilled, tankers spilling, forests clearcut, concrete produced (a major source of greenhouse gases), and nuclear plants built
No destruction of the ocean floor by deep sea mining and oil drilling
Fewer oil pipelines disturbing animal migration routes, fewer windmills killing birds
Smaller markets for trophy-hunting and fur: more wildlife survival
Less destruction of estuaries and shorelines by development
A shrinkage of harbours and reduction of attendant pollution
Less demand for bushmeat: elephants and our primate cousins might not go extinct, leaving us the only large primate on Earth
Less competition for ever-scarcer natural resources would create less occasion for war
Being able to de-militarize, nations could spend more money on health care and education of populations

Jobs of the Future:
Innovators and inventors, of technology to get rid of the Great Pacific Plastic Garbage Patch
Inventors of ways to get rid of overflowing landfills: recyclers of used (de)construction materials
Land reclamation biologists
Researchers: medical, pure sciences, psychology
Teachers: to train tomorrow's researchers and inventors
Medical practitioners of all types
Farmers
Artists, writers, musicians, performers
Tree planters en masse
Ecotourism operators
Eldercare workers
Bankers, diplomats, lawyers, service providers of all types, labourers
Philosophers, theologians, media people

Add your own career ideas -- this is just a broad-outline suggestion, and of course all depends on how the world economy would be managed and regulated. The point is that when animals benefit, humans benefit. Over-crowding is the common factor. Over half the human race already live in cities; in 2050 virtually all will. The planet's equatorial band may well be all desert, and the rest an endless city. Where will wildlife go? Crowding them out means crowding ourselves too. Wouldn't it be great not to have gridlocked freeways, long waits in hospital emergency rooms, overcrowded classrooms, residential neighbourhoods so dense a child can grow up without ever putting feet off pavement?

If population decreases, where will the jobs be, people often ask? As much wealth can be created, money circulated and talent nurtured by putting Earth's natural treasures back, as has been made by ripping them out. Our "footprint" has sickened, polluted and unbalanced the atmosphere, oceans and landscapes alike. Continuing population growth can only lead for the next generation to a humanity divided into warring camps of haves and have-nots, living without wild companions on a paved, artificial, poisoned, lifeless planet. How alone and desolate we will be. Reversing population growth could lead so elegantly to the opposite. What are we so afraid of?

“The earth does not belong to humans.” — Arne Naess

Optimum Population Trust: www.optimumpopulation.org

Compassion in World Farming: www.ciwf.org.uk

Watching the Giant Tragedy of Whales

Watching Giants: The Secret Lives of Whales, by Elin Kelsey; U of California Press, 2009

In Watching Giants, Kelsey shows us how understanding the evolution and nature of whales depends on understanding the ocean. Earth's oceans are all joined as a unit by narrower channels and consist of internal rivers of warm and cold currents, created by the Earth's rotation and the coming and going of ice ages. The temperature differences determine the distribution of life. Uprush of currents for instance creates thick masses of krill, food of the massive blue whale. Whales hear the currents coming and going, and they tell each other about it by communicating over hundreds of underwater miles. Scientists used to think some species were solitary, but they were actually in constant mutual contact, only their conversation-ranges were unimaginably big by land-creature standards.

Whales live in matrilinear societies comprising lifelong relationships. They enjoy a long period of maturation and parental care, grandmothers being as important as mothers in teaching and protecting the young. As science has seen with primates, intense mother-infant interaction goes along with complicated group dynamics which depend on the complex communication skills learned in childhood. Whales organize complicated food finding strategies, including learning how, when and where to get the fish off the human fishing equipment being forever dragged through their oceans.

Kelsey describes whale research going on off the shores of Baja California and juxtaposes stories from her own family life with two small children with stories of the family lives of the whales -- the greys, orcas and dolphins, and the pilot, sperm and blue whales. Whales "see" and communicate through echolocation, getting information about the geography of the underwater mountains and valleys as well as everything in the water, by a vast continuous shower of impulses bouncing from all directions off surfaces, objects and movements. This, unfortunately, is what ships and military submarines also use for navigation and surveillance, their engine noises and sonar filling the whales' world with underwater smog that not only cuts off their communications but even ruptures their inner membranes and drives them to madness and suicide by stranding. (Imagine your world being swept by a constant glare of blinding floodlights so that you couldn't use your eyes, couldn't find anyone else, your head was splitting and you couldn't escape.)

Shoreline development, massive shipping and harbours, offshore dumping, oil and gas seismic testing and drilling, and the wiping out of fish stocks one after another, are the things humanity is doing to make life impossible for whales. Keeping our numbers fed and our ever-growing gargantuan cities serviced is destroying the oceans as well as the land around us. Kelsey's book reads like a who's who of current North American whale researchers, and she quotes long conversations with them, all conveying a dismal sense of hopelessness about the whales' future on a planet they have the bad luck to share with monsters which invade from the land: us.

Which is worse: being starved to death (because humanity has fished out half the species in the seas), or being driven mad by military sonar because humans like to blow each other up and therefore need a biosphere-destroying worldwide military security system to protect themselves from each other? An epic tale indeed, of the ocean giant and the moral pygmy.

So what are the moral things we can do?

Don't eat fish.
Don't go on a cruise.
Have only one child.
Tell political representatives we don't want a "terror war" in the oceans.
Campaign against extraction of oil and minerals from the oceans.