Mourning the Loss of Yet Another Species

          I was asked some time ago to write a couple of paragraphs on how people who care for their pets can strike a balance between caring for their pets and taking time for themselves. It is, I am told, something I should teach and help people with. I thought about it for weeks. My teachings have always been about the environment and specifically the animals that depend on it.

          I thought, “Is this what I should be teaching now?” I struggled with it for a time. More and more I came to realize what I want to teach is compassion for all life and the caring for and protection of all animals will follow. We need to balance our relationship with all animals.

          Today I saw a story on CBS Sunday Morning that brought it home for me.

          It was a very short segment on endangered species, “Capturing America’s Endangered Species”. They were promoting the book, Rare, by the Photographer Joel Sartore. The segment opened with the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit. The very last Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit in the world. Her name was Brinn. She died a few months after her “Photo Session”. While the species was officially announced as extinct in January, 2009, the tears have yet to leave my eyes.

          In looking in those tired old and lonely eyes in the photograph I wonder what she was thinking. That’s right I said thinking. To believe that humans are the only thinking animals is nothing more than pure Ego. That is another article altogether.

          Did she wonder what happened to all the others. Rabbits are social animals…like humans. What would you think if your crowded cities were empty in a few years. You are the only one left. You are then captured and kept in a cage, alone, fed the wrong foods (Yes, that is right, the recovery program was half baked and not once based on or consulted with scientists. Thus the failure.). What would you do alone, isolated every day, all day? No one to interact with. The entire time not understanding what happened or why.

          So I looked into her eyes and cried for her. I cried for her loss…our loss. I cried because of the injustice. What right do we have as a species to take her and her ancestor’s land? As Henry Beston wrote in The Outermost House in 1928, “They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.” They are other Nations. As such we are nothing more than aggressive, hostile invaders of their land. We did not just take her land and destroy it and its natural beauty. We changed it for our purposes and destroyed its useful purpose to her and the planet. Such an invasion of another country would be seen as hostile and wars would break out. People would gather on the streets protesting. Yet, Brinn’s death, the death of her entire species was not met with shock or outrage. She and her species slipped away hardly noticed. She was not even honored with a day of mourning. At least 100 species a day go extinct. Slipping away in silence, every day, unnoticed.

     Invading the nations of these animals and all animals is seen instead as man’s dominion over the Earth. It is man’s dominion, but how does giving it such a name make it acceptable? Man has had dominion over other human beings (justified based on race and sex) and yet we see those as abhorrent. Invading peaceful Nations is only thought of and done by tyrants. Well? Where does that leave us as a species, a Nation, a Society?

          My thoughts upon looking into this poor tired rabbit’s eyes also went to anger and shame. It was my species that caused her death and her species extinction. Development, energy lines cutting through her land and mostly opening up her land to cattle grazing are cited as the main reasons for Brinn’s entire species, her entire culture to be extinguished. Grazing was allowed on her and her ancestor’s land for decades, even when her species’ time was near the end. Knowing she and others like her were in danger of extinction grazing on her land was not only continued but expanded! Brinn and her family were pushed from her land, her food stolen by the cows and replaced with foreign grasses that were better for cows and the people who profit from them.

          Cattle is why she and her entire Nation were exterminated. Cattle! In the meantime the mainstream media, Congress, the President, and all the agencies assigned to her and her family’s protection let it continue. It was better for the Cattle Ranchers if she and all her “kind” just went away. The lesson has not been learned. The grazing on the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbits’ land still expands today and soon her neighbors will be joining Brinn. More lost animals seen only in picture books telling all those who follow what it used to be like.

            So I cannot teach anyone how to balance caring for your pet with caring for yourself. Instead we need to learn how to balance our relationship with the planet and all the Nations on it. I do not talk of human Nations that go to war. I speak of Nations that keep the world spinning, the rains falling, the air circulating and the world beautiful. People speak of changes coming. Others speak of a “Cosmic Shift”. Unless they consist of a drastic and serious shift in the human mind-set and knocking down a few notches on our Egos, the changes that need to happen won’t come. The loss of entire species, even if it is a “bug” should be absolutely unacceptable and answers and accountability should be demanded.

“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
          -Albert Schweitzer

I cannot think of a better way to balance our lives and take care of ourselves.

     Until then, I and others like me, will teach and continue to nudge and even shake the Egos that threaten our world, our nonhuman neighbors, and our very existence. The whole time with tears in my eyes for the many who were lost and will be lost in our War on Nature, until we find peace with It. After all, “all animals, rare or common, have a right to exist”.