Save the Wolves: Support the Rights of All Animals

Make no mistake, I love wolves as much as just about anyone; yet some people practically worship them, putting them above any other species except perhaps whales and dolphins. To be sure, wolves are sacred, but there are folks who think of them as hyper-sentient—the great Northern furred land-dolphin, if you will.

I’m not for a minute denying wolves’ intelligence or adherence to an almost human-like social caste system, but I can’t get behind campaign slogans such as “Real hunters don’t hunt wolves.” I call bullshit on that. Real hunters hunt wolves, coyotes, elk, deer, prairie dogs, pigeons, pronghorn, bears, cougars, raccoons— anything and everything that moves or has ever moved. Hell, they’d probably hunt whales and dolphins if it weren’t for the Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. Most hunters just want a target and a trophy, they don’t really care what species it is.

Granted, some hunters are more sadistic than others, just as some serial killers revel in their victims’ suffering, while others dispatch their prey as quickly as possible—they’re only interest: harvesting a trophy corpse to have around, for whatever morbid reason. The most sadistic hunters are probably fueled by the fact that there are people out there who adore wolves while state laws still consider delisted wolves “property” like every other non-human animal.

Serial killers have been known to derive sick pleasure from taunting the families of their victims, calling them from prison to recount their murders. The same kind of thing likely goes on in the minds of sadistic wolf hunters who boast and post photos of their kills, knowing that some sentimental environmentalist or animal rightsists might come across one and be hurt or outraged by it. They’d love to know that one of us broke down, burned out or resorted to lethal action because of their post (as long as they weren’t on the receiving end of the action).

The wolf situation is unique among modern-day animal atrocities, in that it’s as yet perfectly “legal” for hunters and trappers to film themselves in action. In sharing them online, they’re banking on the fact that the general public is unmoved and apathetic. But I’d like to think that if factory farmers readily shared footage of their routine acts of animal abuse online, there would be a lot more vegans in this world.

For now, the only way anti-wolf sadists can be stopped is by eliminating them from the world of the living. But if you happen to reside in one of those backward states that have yet to implement a death penalty for wolf hunting, the best advice is to just ignore them like you would the taunts of any other bully. Meanwhile, keep petitioning Facebook and other social media outlets where their death porn appears. As long as animals, including wolves, are seen only as “property” by the powers that be, the people who run Facebook will feel entitled to allow anti-wolf evil to be spread throughout their pages and posts.

Eventually common decency will prevail and violent anti-wolf/anti-animal sites will come under serious scrutiny, just as misogynistic sites recently have. We need to step up the pressure on Facebook and let them know that freedom of speech does not give one the right to victimize. Be sure to sign this petition and pass it on:
http://www.change.org/petitions/facebook-executives-ban-sadistic-pages-of-wildlife-torture

Meanwhile, let’s fight for the rights and personhood of all animals, not just a chosen few.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

Man, I Wish You Were Never Born

Some folks wonder why I sound like such a misanthropist when I talk about the human species. Although to me the answer appears obvious, I suppose I should explain myself to those who might think of human beings as “superior,” “God’s chosen ones” or in some other way entitled to do as they will to the planet and its non-human inhabitants.

I don’t hold all people to blame equally. I certainly don’t blame you, dedicated reader. You can’t help being born human any more than a wolf, sea lion, salmon or slug has any say over who or what they were born. But there are those who seem to go out of their way to fuel my misanthropy. You see, humans don’t just kill other animals to fill their bellies; they destroy them in droves out of spite, to eliminate the competition…or just for fun.

When I hear hate-speech against wolves from hunters who’d rather have them eradicated again than have to work a little harder to “get their elk;” or come across a starving sea lion on the beach and then read that emaciated sea lion pups are washing up in California by the hundreds–all due to their food being robbed by overly-industrious-yet-completely-terrestrial commercial fishermen who have no business taking anything from the sea; or learn that dolphins are being repeatedly shot to death by people along the Gulf coast I tend to get a bit cynical of the notion that man was created in the image of any kind of benevolent god.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013.

In commenting about the recent rash of dolphin shootings, Randall Lockwood, senior vice president of the Forensic Sciences and Anti-Cruelty Projects department at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), said, “One of the things that seems to underlie most intentional animal cruelty and acts of abuse is a need for power and control. A lot of severe animal cruelty [comes from an] absence of empathy, and also a sense that [the perpetrators] have a right to do these things.”

Backing up the premise that people act out of an overblown sense of entitlement, Robert Grillo, founder of the group Free From Harm, writes, “Not only do we assert our supremacy over nonhumans, we act upon it at every opportunity. The notion that human interests “trump” animal interests when we create an imaginary conflict of interest is particularly delusional when one considers that we wantonly kill 60 billion land animals and kill another trillion or so aquatic animals every year just to suit our pleasure in eating them, not for any legitimate need to survive.

“In fact, Professor Gary Francione of Rutgers University continually points to the schizophrenic nature of our relationship with animals. Francione simply asks us to look at the big picture: 99% of our animal use is unnecessary and for purposes of pleasure, entertainment, curiosity and education.”

While Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, “In relation to animals, all men are Nazis,” perhaps a more appropriate analogy for today’s world would be, “In relation to animals, all humans are serial killers.” How many parents of serial killers have secretly thought to themselves, “I wish Teddy would have never been born?” Considering how well the Earth got by before Homo sapiens came along and started messing with things, and how much mankind resembles a serial killer in its domineering attitude towards animals, I have to say, “Man, I wish you were never born.”

Life on Earth can take a lot of abuse and still come back for more, but it’s never had to withstand more than a few hundred thousand predacious hominids at a time. I don’t find much solace in the prediction by statisticians that the skyrocketing human population “will start to level off when it reaches 10 billion.” TEN BILLION over-consumptive human carnivores devouring everything in their collective path sounds like a monoculture of jabber-mouth two-leggers to me.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013.

On to Other Important Issues

It’s Election Day and you’re probably on pins and needles waiting to find out which lucky candidate will be the next President of the United States. But I want to talk about something more important.

I don’t have anything in particular in mind. It could be the weather (or more specifically, how the weather is changing because of global warming). Or, it could be the rhino poaching problem in Africa, the dolphin slaughter going on right now in Japan or the perilously low numbers of big cats left on the planet. Or how, for some people, attitudes towards wolves haven’t changed since the barbarically backwards days of dark ages past.

The point is, no matter how this hyped-up human election turns out, there are other important issues going on at the same time that aren’t getting the media attention they deserve.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson