Photo Credit: Trish Boyum Nature Photography“By valuing individuals, we can learn more about them. We’re asking questions at a different unit of focus, which allows for a whole new body of knowledge to be discovered…It’s going to make us do better science and make...
Recent Essays
In their true meaning, words like co-existence and co-habitation mean that humans and wild animals co-shape spaces. A mutuality of effort takes place. An effort is a crucial word, as well as openness of mind. This is the only path worth taking. It’s high time for a different way of thinking to prevail, one which embraces the mystery of nature and the ongoing evolution of dynamic social-ecological systems.
Compassion draws from a fenceless space. It is different from altruism because compassion comes from an understanding of being connected. True compassion does not stop where one body ends and another begins.
By ignoring psyche, animal behavior reduces an individual’s subjective experience to mere signs, passive markers that assume an animal’s inability to voice. In contrast, a psychological framing sees behavior as one among many symptoms through which an animal speaks.
In the name of progress, we have built the world based on lies that codified our distorted vision of nature. Our anthropocentric worldview turned the wonder of the living world into an object of fear and hatred. No winners, only losers, emerged from the transformation.
Humans and wildlife can co-exist. If scientifically based compassionate measures are tried, if both humans and wildlife are offered a chance to succeed, we could not only save coyotes from unnecessary death but also salvage our own humanity.
In the Western context, the fear of wild animals reflects our distorted perception of risk, not the risk itself. Unfortunately, this is a consequential fallacy that victimizes carnivores.