I'm a conservationist. I love the outdoors, or
more specifically, the wilderness. That's one reason I came to Dartmouth, to be, as Edward Abbey would have said, "beyond the wall of the unreal city."
As a conservationist, I'm frustrated and confused by the amount of energy animal rights activists donate to some causes while abstaining from any involvement with others. Their priorities speak volumes with their omissions. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) discusses on its website the following general goals: to eliminate the keeping of aquarium fish in tanks, to eliminate spaying and neutering practices in domestic animals, to abolish the practice of controlled fishing and hunting, to shut down livestock farms and so on. The issues of "humanity" as applied to non-humans will be debated forever; there's no getting around someone's perspective and they are entitled to their opinion. And I don't think all goals of this type of organization are bogus (more on that later). But none of them really address what is to me a much more pressing problem: the conservation of wild places and habitats, and the long-term survival of complex ecologies. These are the two biggest questions that threaten the vast majority of wildlife, and in the long run, of people, on Earth. If you want to talk about total impact on animal lives, you have to start talking conservation of habitat.
Consider the impact of the following two scenarios. In the first, a man kills a deer to feed himself and his family. The impact on that one organism is tremendous, but on the surrounding ecology minimal. In the second scenario, he goes to a grocery store and buys a 10-pound bag of potatoes. Those potatoes die, and that seems to be the end of it. But is it really? Somewhere out there in America, a huge tract of land was cleared for a farm. Native wildlife was displaced if not killed outright. The trees were felled, the soil tilled, the creeks dammed. Crops were planted. Large amounts of time and money were spent on pesticides, fences and bullets to ensure that "pest species," deer among them, were prevented from eating the crops. In many instances, farming vegetables has actually had much more impact on wildlife than any fisherman or hunter, as in the case of DDT. In the long run, the ecological impact of a bag of potatoes is very significant.
I'm not attacking farmers here, not at all. Almost everyone in the world relies on them. My point is that the total impact of a given food source is often much more complex a story than we think. Especially in today's supermarket culture, it is easy to become isolated from the processes by which food is acquired. And the hard fact of the matter is that every human on Earth only lives because something else died.
Organizations truly concerned with the quality of life of organisms on Earth (and that understand what the problems are) work to preserve habitats, set aside preserves, prevent massive clear-cutting, try and stop air and water pollution, and invest in cleaner sources of energy. But groups like PETA don't. As a matter of fact, they attack groups that do. Here is a list of organizations which PETA urges members not to support: the National Wildlife Federation, the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society and the World Wildlife Fund. Other groups criticized or hated by some animal rights activists include Trout Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited. Any familiar names?
The Nature Conservancy alone has protected more than 12 million acres of wild lands in America and 80 million acres abroad, owning 1300 pristine preserves in this country. These groups are some of the most active, most dedicated and most effective conservation bodies in the world. But PETA doesn't want you supporting them. Why not? PETA urges members not to support these groups because they support regulated fishing and hunting. That's the only reason. It's pretty hard to front an argument that the aforementioned organizations don't work for the benefit of the natural world.
I think the leaders of groups like PETA are misguided and ignorant, but not all of their goals are. There is no question that some farming practices are questionable, such as grossly unsanitary hog rearing in North Carolina that caused problems with Pfiesteria infestations in humans and wildlife. Or the debates about primate drug testing; these animals seem to have a sense of self and demonstrate very high levels of sentience and understanding, unlike plants or animals raised for food. Or problems with animal cruelty and abuse in shelters or homes; to me there is a very important distinction between torture and using animals for food, to cause pain for the sake of causing pain is sick and criminal.
There are enough real threats to nature these days. More effort needs to be spent educating people about what these are, and motivating society to support organizations that deal with them. I find it hard to believe in the genuine concern for life of any organization that worries more about the individual goldfish than they do about the loss of a forest.
