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.

Deer 911

A couple of months ago, I was leaving a late-night meeting to drive the 45 minutes home on dark, two-lane Appalachian roads. “Be safe!” my fellow volunteers called out as I left. I shared their concern: dark country roads during the deer rut are dangerous indeed, and I always thank God when I make it home without killing myself or a deer.

I didn’t hit a deer on the way home, but I saw one that had been hit by someone else. It was bucking desperately from where it lay on the side of the road, trying to stand up so it could run to safety. It was a small deer, probably one of last year’s fawns or maybe a yearling, I’m guessing a doe. I called 911 and asked timidly if the need to put down an injured deer is indeed an emergency. Turns out it is, and the dispatcher sent a Maryland state highway officer to do the job.

While I waited, several cars stopped for a few seconds to look at the deer and then drove on. Finally, one stopped and backed up toward me, and a young woman got out.

“Are you claiming it?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you claiming it? If not, I’ll take it. We don’t like to see good meat go to waste.”

I looked at her small, two-door, foreign car questioningly. “Hey,” she said. “All I need is a knife, a tarp, and a trunk!”  She was a tiny, thin thing. You gotta love a tough country gal.

I explained that I had already called 911, and she looked a little disappointed. “Well, hopefully he’ll let me claim it. He might want to use my knife instead of shooting it since we’re so close to houses.” It seemed she had done this before.

We waited together until he arrived, about fifteen minutes later. By then, the deer had managed to get on its feet and drag its wounded rear end across the road, where it continued about four or five feet and lay down in the grass. (For those of you who fault me for wasting the time of a police officer on such a situation, I can add that the deer standing in the road almost caused another hit. So ... endangering the public, etc., etc.)

I fretted the whole time. I hated to see that poor animal suffer. I also hated to think that she might actually heal up and survive if there weren’t an officer on his way to kill her, thanks to me. My husband is a hunter and has seen (er, shot) some strange things: a deer with a broken leg that had healed, a deer that had been shot and whose body had calcified the bullet and gone on to survive to an old age. Oh well, I consoled myself, at least she’ll feed a family. I know personally how deeply satisfying it is to go into winter with a freezer full of venison.

How many deer die horrible deaths every day as part of their natural lives? I would be willing to bet it’s a very high number. Disease, starvation, wounds, attacks by other animals, old age - the end of life can be pretty horrible for a deer. For all wildlife. So why did I feel so heartbroken about a deer hit by a car and so personally responsible for making sure that it suffered as little as possible? I’ve been chewing on that ever since, and I think it goes beyond the fact that I just really love animals.

I think we feel a responsibility for wildlife that live in our human environment. That deer was in the road that night because we built the road, because in the last few years we took that isolated farmland and developed it with McMansions and condos and now there are way too many cars on that narrow, curvy, unlighted road. We turned this country into a country of edges, where woods and fields come together, and the deer population thrived and increased because edge is the perfect habitat for white-tailed deer. I’m not faulting us for that (at least not right now, in this blog), but I am interested in how it might make us feel responsible for the animals that then live and die in our human landscape. It’s not so easy to just dismiss death as “part of the life cycle” when we set up the conditions that led to it.