Critters

The other day, I was out for a hike and I came across a fawn laying low in a grassy area.  Mom had hidden her fawn while she went to go browse, and it was simply laying there quietly. The adorable factor of this fawn cannot be exaggerated; I had to stand in the presence for a moment and be one with the cute. I also took a picture as unobtrusively as I could, which does not adequately portray the cuteness.

In the past few weeks, I've also come across several snakes.  Snakes are not as cute as fawns.  When you talk about snakes, people either love them or hate them.  I used to hate them but they're growing on me.  Everyone loves fawns. 

It got me thinking about how we value nature, and the recent situation with Harambe the Western lowland silverback gorilla.  I'm not going to talk about the mother and whether or not she was at fault; every possible aspect of that has been addressed by nearly every breathing person with access to a computer in the United States.

Let me state this right now and get it out of the way:  I love nature (with the exception of poison ivy, feral hogs, rats, mosquitoes and termites). I love observing it, I love journaling about it, and I love photographing it.  I hope that other people come to see its beauty the way that I do, but even if no one else does, I still have a deep-rooted need to be in it.  I'm not interested in judging the mother and I'm not trying to either justify or criticize the zoo's response.  However, I do think the event raises questions about our relationship with nature.

I took an environmental ethics class several years ago.  If you want to torture yourself by pondering emotionally charged and potentially controversial questions that have no single, easy answer, environmental ethics is what you are looking for. One of the questions we discussed was the placing of value on nature.  How do you determine the worth of a critter, or a tree, or an entire ecosystem?  Is it by its utility to humankind, or its cute factor, or by its scarcity?  Do we attach a higher value to Harambe than to a rat snake because silverback gorillas are on the critically endangered list, and rat snakes seem to be, at least in my neck of the woods, everywhere? 

The IUCN critically endangered list includes 26 birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals in the United States alone.  If one of these critters happened to stand in the way of economic development, would we value it over money?  Would there be a public outcry equivalent to the one over Harambe's death? Or would there be calls to repeal the laws that protect endangered species in the interest of financial gain? 

Why are we all so angry about the death of a gorilla in a zoo, but completely fine when someone kills a snake because they think that it might be a threat, even if it turns out it was a non-venomous snake and it was nowhere near any human being?   What is the value of the gorilla as opposed to the value of a rat snake in your back yard?  Rats love to eat the wiring in your car.  This, I know from experience. If I have a rat problem, and I value animals based on utility, the rat snake is far more valuable to me than a gorilla in a zoo. 

Animals die all the time by human hands, both directly and indirectly. They get hit by cars and shot by landowners.  We eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  We pave over their habitats and then demand that our municipal leaders do something about the "coyote problem".  But when a Cecil the lion or Harambe the gorilla dies, a tidal wave of righteous wrath ensues. Is it because we've anthropomorphized certain animals, giving them qualities they may or may not actually possess: the courageous and loyal lion, the protective and gentle gorilla, the sneaky, wily coyote, the evil, manipulative snake? 

Why are we so angry about the death of one animal, and yet so easily able to justify the continuing destruction of so much of the natural world?

I do not know the answers to any of these questions, but I think it's a discussion worth having.