The Individual vs. the Species

I recently read an amazing book: American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West, by Nate Blakeslee. It tells the story of the release of wolves into Yellowstone National Park, and it follows “characters” in a novelistic style: the wolves themselves, the elk hunters who hate the wolves, the politicians, and the various employees of U.S. Fish & Wildlife who have to balance the science, the wildlife, and the politics. It’s a fascinating read - just the kind of book I would love to write. 

One of the tensions described in the book exists between those who see wolves as a species and those who see wolves as individuals. It is easy to fall in love with the individual wolves as Blakeslee describes their struggles to survive, find mates, protect their young, hunt and feed, and maintain their territory. A wolf life is a hard life, and you can’t help but admire an individual who is particularly good at the game or overcomes enormous obstacles to come out on top. When a hunter kills Oh-Six, a magnificent wolf with an online following from around the world, her loss destroys the pack altogether. Oh-Six’s fans are so enraged that they come together to turn the local anti-wolf political tide.

Wolves chasing bull elk in Yellowstone.
Photo by Doug Smith, Public Domain.

For hunters and many FWS employees, however, the emphasis is on the species. As long as the species is healthy and has sufficient numbers to survive, the loss of individuals cannot matter. Hunters have played a role in maintaining the health of many species, either by promoting habitat or culling overpopulated numbers. To them, the presence of too many wolves lowers the number of elk drastically, meaning that hunters cannot enjoy hunting as many did before. And before you start dismissing these hunters as nothing better than the trophy hunter who killed Cecil the Lion a couple of years ago, remember that many hunters are subsistence hunters, providing meat to their families that would otherwise be unaffordable or because they believe that meat from the factory farming system is unhealthy.

I started reading another book a couple of years ago about scientists trying to figure out bird migration and nest-building patterns among migrating songbirds. They would wreak havoc on individual birds in order to understand the species better. For example, they would kill or relocate males to assess how and when other males would move into their territory. I was so upset that I couldn’t continue reading. I kept thinking: what do those individual birds care about the species? You’re ruining their lives! I feel the same when I hear about efforts to keep nearly-extinct species extant by caging them and raising them in captivity so that maybe they can be released into the wild someday. If we could ask these individuals whether they wish to sacrifice themselves as individuals to save their species, what would they say? And yet how can we sit by and not do everything possible to keep species from going extinct?

Laos Cattle Keeping, photo by ILRI Stevie Mann.
CC NY-BC-SA 2.0

All of this seems to boil down to what “use” we see animals serving. And culture matters here. Those of us who are taught to see animals primarily as pets or as objects to be viewed at a zoo may be more likely to anthropomorphize them, or give them the human qualities that allow us to see them as individuals. Those whose cultural context shapes them to see animals as populations to be studied or managed are able to look at the woods rather than the trees. And then there are those people in the world who live closely with animals as part of their livelihood; they seem able to take both views at once. They have to distance themselves from the animals as individuals in order to herd, transport, or kill and butcher them. And yet, living so closely with them, they come to notice and admire their individual traits and tendencies, what many would insist are their “personalities.”

Who is right? Which attitude is best for the short- and long-term wellbeing of wildlife? It’s hard to say. Maybe we need the combination of perspectives, and the push and pull of debate, to reverse the harm we have done to the world’s wildlife. And Blakeslee's book offers a poignant reminder: we must also try to understand one another and the human experiences that we bring to the debate.