FE6.4 - Humane Being - Future Ecologies

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Introduction Voiceover (00:01):
You are listening to Season Six of
Future Ecologies.

Adam Huggins (00:06):
Hey, Mendel.

Mendel Skulski (00:07):
Hey, Adam.

[Sigh]

Uh... what's on your mind?

I'm finding I'm having to, like, take deep
breaths a lot these days, justin general.

Yeah, these are those days.

Unfortunately, I have a bit of a downer of an
episode for us today.

What perfect timing.

Right? But I promise you, there is some light
at the end of this dark tunnelI'm about to lead you into.
Trust me.

Well, I guess I have to take your word for it.
What do you got?

So, today's show is really about life and death.
We are gonna explore one of ourdeepest moral dilemmas as human
beings living through anextinction crisis.

Woo hoo! One of our deepest moral dilemmas. And
that would be?

That would be, is it okay to kill one thing in
order to save another? Here, letme give you an example.

Okay, shoot ...no, wait! Don't shoot!
Uh... where are we headed?

Mendel, if you were to guess what the southern
most peace of Canada is. Wherewould you guess?
Somewhere in Ontario?
Yes, it's part of Point PeleeNational Park in Ontario. And
specifically, we're on a boatgoing to this tiny, 46 acre
forested island in the middle ofLake Erie, which goes by the

(01:42):
name of Middle Island.

Sarah Cox (01:44):
And it is a remnant of the Carolinian ecosystem,
which is an ecosystem that haslargely been wiped out of
Ontario because of humanactivity. There's very little of
it left.

Long time listeners might recognize Sarah
Cox.

Sarah Cox (02:00):
Yes, I was on the show, I think maybe six years
ago.

Yeah, that was in season two, our episode on
lichen and mountain caribou,which was also a depressing one.

Purely coincidental Mendel. And just to
remind folks, Sarah is an authorand a journalist with the
excellent investigativeenvironmental news and
photography outlet, The Narwhal.And our story today is partly
inspired by a book she wrote.

Sarah Cox (02:30):
My most recent book is called Signs of Life — Field
Notes From the Front Lines ofExtinction.

Bringing us back to Middle Island, which, as
Sarah said, is one of the lastCanadian outposts of the
Carolinian ecosystem.

Caro.... like North and South Carolina?

Yeah, actually. Carolinian forest is an
ecosystem and a relativelycommon one across the eastern
United States, but it reachesits northernmost extent in the
southern most part of Canada,and that part also happens to be
the most densely populated partof the entire country.

Sarah Cox (03:08):
Yeah. So in southern Ontario, through development,
through agriculture, throughindustry, we have eliminated,
like, more than 90% and 95% insome places of this ecosystem,
with beautiful hardwood treeslike sassafras.

Sassafras! Sassafras, sassafras... great
name.

Sassafras, yes, and a bunch of other really cool
plants that are really rare inCanada, like the Blue Ash or the
Clustered Sedge, the Common HopTree — not so common in Canada,
it turns out — the Red Mulberry,the Wild Hyacinth and the
Kentucky Coffee Tree.

Kentucky coffee tree...?

Yes, it does not produce coffee.

Oh.

It is a tree. It is found in Kentucky, and it's
actually in the legume family.

Huh... bean tree

Yeah, pretty cool tree. Also a schedule one
threatened species in Canada.

Okay, so we've got a bunch of species at risk
in an endangered ecosystem inCanada

On a tiny island in a national park. Yes.

Right. Okay, so right, where they belong — under
protection.

Well, they're protected, true. At least from
people.

So what's the problem? What's threatening all
the rare plants of MiddleIsland, if not people?

Well, the rare plants of Middle Island are
being threatened... how can Iput this politely? They're being
threatened by bird [splat].

Sarah Cox (04:38):
So there's so many layers of complexity to this,
but basically, Parks Canada, theproblem that they ran into after
they acquired Middle Island wasthat cormorants had taken over
the island. Cormorants are thisbeautiful sea bird out on the
ocean or the Great Lakes.They're kind of iconic of this

(04:59):
black bird with its wingsoutspread to dry.

You're familiar with cormorants, right?

Yeah, I've been pooped on by cormorants, in
fact. Have I never told you thatstory?

I am pretty sure you have not.

I spent a summer working at the False Creek Yacht
Club under the Granville StreetBridge, writing anchor permits
and washing the boardwalk —because every morning under the
bridge, they'd be covered incormorant droppings. And every
time I had to cross under thatparticular section, I'd have to
put my hood up on my rubber rainjacket, because they would just
be spraying poop... likeactively, all day. It was crazy.

(05:35):
It's like, absurd how much thosebirds poop. And hearing it hit
the water like prtprtptptptpt...So yeah, they're poop machines
for real. You

You know, it's funny, Mendel, not so long ago,
cormorants almost went extinct.

Sarah Cox (05:49):
Cormorants themselves are a conservation success story
because they were almost wipedout due to DDT, which thinned
their eggs and made it hard forthem to reproduce.
cormorants moved back in to Lake Erie, and they

(06:12):
started to nest on MiddleIsland, and there were so many
of them there that they weredestroying the trees and the
Carolinian ecosystem on theisland. Never mind that humans
had already destroyed most ofthis same ecosystem in southern

(06:32):
Ontario, the cormorants, withtheir guano and just their sheer
numbers, were putting thisecosystem at risk on the island,
and so Parks Canada decided thatthe only option to save Kentucky
Coffee Trees and the otherspecies at risk of extinction on
the island was to kill thecormorants.

Wait, what?

Parks Canada has been killing cormorants
periodically on Middle Islandsince 2008. And this activity
has predictably put them in thecrosshairs of animal rights
activists.

Okay, but hold on. I feel like there's a
there's a contradiction here.The cormorants were almost
extinct, and we saved them, andnow we're killing them to save
some plants.

I mean, some very special plants, Mendel and the
species that depend on them.

Okay... but doesn't this seem, like, a
little extreme? Like they poop alot, but how much harm can they
really be doing?

Well, consider this. You've got 1000s and 1000s
of these big black water birdsnesting and hanging out in trees
across this little island,eating fish and defecating
constantly, which you'refamiliar with.

Unfortunately.

And all of that guano is coating the leaves of
the trees, coating the groundand essentially changing the
soil chemistry to the point thatit can kill these plants.

Gross.

Yeah. And Sarah got to see and smell all of this
for herself when she visited.

Sarah Cox (08:01):
Definitely there was a strong smell of guano. It
actually looked pretty denuded.Quite honestly, I think the
cormorants had done a number onthe forest.

And what number is that, you might ask, Mendel?
Number two, of course. Anyhow,Sarah was there because a couple
of animal rights organizations,the Animal Alliance of Canada
and Born Free USA, had takenParks Canada to court, and while
they weren't able to stop thecull, they did win the right to
observe it. And Sarah went alongfor the ride.

Sarah Cox (08:32):
Exactly.

How did that go?

Well, the observers were pretty limited in
what they could actually...observe. Parks Canada had strict
limits on where their boat couldbe while the sharpshooters did
their work.

Sarah Cox (08:45):
We heard the guns. We saw the birds, not just
cormorants, but herons andpelicans and other birds being
really disturbed by thegunshots.

There's pelicans here too?

There's lots of bird life and wildlife using
this area. I mean, remember,it's one of the last remnants of
this kind of ecosystem leftanywhere in Canada.

Wow. But just to pick up on what you said a
second ago, these observerscouldn't actually watch the
cormorant cull directly?

At least not while Sarah was there, and we'll get
into this a bit later, but thistracks with Sarah's overall
experience of wildlife culls inCanada. They're not easy to
observe, right? They're donewith relatively limited
visibility to the public. Andyou know that can breed
distrust.

Right, unsurprisingly.

And the reality of many of these species at risk
here in Canada is that some ofthem are more common south of
the border. Some folks mightargue that they don't actually
need this level of protection uphere because they have habitat
left in the States.

On the other hand, you might wonder how safe
any species is south of theborder right now.

Yeah, from a scientific point of view, there
is a really good reason why wechoose to protect marginal
populations like this.

Sarah Cox (09:55):
When you think about climate change and how species
are going to have to shift northand up to try to adapt, it
becomes far more important toprotect the northern extent of
the species and ecosystems thatare found in southern Canada.

According to Parks Canada, the cull is achieving
the desired effect. There arepublished reports and peer
reviewed studies out there tosupport what they're doing. My
understanding is actually thatif they were to stop culling the
cormorants, some of theendangered species on Middle
Island would almost certainly beextirpated, as they have been
elsewhere in the region

Oof. So there's your moral dilemma. We can save
these rare plants, or we can letthese birds live, but as long as
the habitat itself is threatenedby our kind of our bigger
systems, we can't have both.

Exactly.

Sarah Cox (10:48):
The efforts that we are going to try to protect
those trees and other species onthe island, while we're just
with abandon destroying them inother areas was really food for
thought.

And this isn't just some isolated case. You can
see this same dynamic playingout with species after
endangered species acrossCanada.

Sarah Cox (11:13):
If you just were to step back and look at all of
these efforts and the amount ofmoney that it costs, I was
really thinking, is this thebest way to go about things? And
of course, you know the answeris no.

For as long as we have been a species, human
beings have employed killing asone of our primary responses to
adversity.

Dirty Harry (11:34):
You gotta ask yourself a question. Do I feel
lucky? Well, do ya, punk?!

We seem to believe at some deep level that, if we
have a problem, killing themanifestation of that problem
might just make it go away.

Lt. Marion "Cobra" Cobretti (11:51):
You're a disease, and I'm the cure.

This is the logic of political assassinations, of
revenge plots and the endings ofmost Hollywood blockbusters.

Terminator (12:03):
Hasta la vista, baby. [Gunshot]

But when we actually apply this logic to the
more than human world, what doesit mean for the species and the
ecosystems that we're impacting?And what does it mean for us?

From Future Ecologies, this is Humane Being,

Introduction Voiceover (12:33):
Broadcasting from the unceded, shared and
asserted territories of theMusqueam, Squamish, and
Tsleil-Waututh, this is FutureEcologies – exploring the shape
of our world through ecology,design, and sound.

Well, since we have Sarah Cox back in the
house, does she have any updateson the mountain caribou
situation?

Nothing particularly encouraging.

Sarah Cox (13:25):
The situation hasn't changed. We're not hearing about
recovery stories. The BCgovernment is still continuing
to sanction clear cut loggingand old growth caribou critical
habitat in the Kootenays. We'rewitnessing the decline of
various herds. We are shootingwolves to try to save caribou

(13:45):
herds at the very last minute,while we are continuing to
destroy their habitat.

I'm already seeing a parallel here between
the situation with the wolvesand the cormorants.

Yeah. So that episode about the wolves and the
caribou was about many things

Famously

But it was mostly about extinction. Yeah,

Sarah Cox (14:06):
So, many people think of Canada as this natural
Wonderland. You know, we'reknown for our mountains and our
prairies and our old growthforests, but the fact is that
Canada has a growing extinctioncrisis.

In her reporting, Sarah points out that we've
already lost over 100 species inCanada, plus about 5000 wild
species in Canada are at somerisk of extinction, and almost
900 of those are criticallyimperiled, meaning they could
soon be lost.

Sarah Cox (14:34):
Things are not trending in the right direction
in Canada, shall we say, despitethis kind of growing wildlife
slash extinction crisis, we arenot managing to turn things
around.

Well, we are off to a rosy start.

Oh, the story about killing cormorants because
they're defecating too much onplants was definitely the most
light hearted thing I have onoffer today. It is all downhill
from here.

I'm afraid to ask, but what could be more
downhill from the state of themountain caribou?

Well, if we're looking at Canada, then it would
be the state of the northernspotted owl. Are you familiar
with spotted owls Mendel?

Not really. I've never seen one. Also never been
pooped on by one, either.

Don't worry, Sarah has got you covered.

Sarah Cox (15:23):
The spotted owl is about the size of a football. It
has chocolate brown coloringwith creamy white spots. It has
brown eyes, which is verydistinct from many owl species.
And this spotted owl has evolvedin tandem with old growth
forests in the Pacific Northwestand Northern California. It

(15:45):
nests in cavities in old growthtrees. Younger trees just don't
provide those nestingopportunities. Its main sources
of prey are bushy tailed woodrats and flying squirrels, which
are also found in old growthforests. And unlike other
species, and other owl species,for example, like the barred

(16:07):
owl, the spotted owl, justcannot exist outside of these
old growth forests.

And as we are all well aware, most of the old
growth forests in the Northwesthave been logged. So spotted
owls are now so rare thatneither you, nor I, nor our
listeners are likely to see one,regardless of how many hours we
log in the woods. That pun, foronce, was not intended.

Sarah Cox (16:33):
And you would think that this would engender some
type of action to protect thespotted owl, and in the States,
it did.

To make a very long story short, through the US
Endangered Species Act and theNorthwest Forest Plan, the
spotted owl eventually receivedsignificant protections... South
of the border,

Sarah Cox (16:53):
1000s and 1000s of hectares of forest lands were
set aside, and today, there'sabout 4000 Northern Spotted owls
left in the States, but whathappened in Canada was...
basically nothing. Nothinghappened,

just like the Carolinian forest, the spotted
owl only has a small portion ofits northernmost range in
Canada, in the forests ofsouthwestern BC. And now, it's
basically gone.

Sarah Cox (17:18):
And no politician is coming out and seeing that
publicly — we have lost thespotted owl from Canada's wild.

Well, maybe it's an obvious question, but like,
how did we get here?

Ah, it is a long sad story that resembles other
various long and sad stories inthe sort of environmental
history of this country. You andI both know that the society and
economy that we grew up in didnot historically value
biodiversity. I think it's fairto say.

Yeah, I'd call that an understatement

On an individual level, however, many of us do
actually care a lot about thefate of all of the other
incredible species that we getto live with. And for some of us
in this group of people whocare, that is just because, at a
philosophical or a spirituallevel, we believe that all life
forms are inherently valuableand that it's morally wrong to

(18:18):
drive some of them toextinction. And you know,
there's also a more utilitarianargument, right? If we lose
biodiversity, we riskdestabilizing the biosphere, and
selfishly, we want there to be abiosphere so we can live.

Yes.

Are you familiar with the rivet popper
hypothesis, Mendel?

I am not.

So the rivet popper hypothesis is this famous
thought experiment proposed bythe biologist Paul Ehrlich in
the 1980s.

Okay?

And it goes something like this, imagine
that an ecosystem is anairplane, and it's flying along,
and all of the species in thatecosystem are the rivets holding
it together. If you lose a fewrivets, says Ehrlich, then the
wings probably won't fall offthe plane right away. But if you

(19:10):
keep removing rivets one by one,who can say exactly when you've
removed one too many?

Hmm, I don't appreciate being a kind of
captive passenger in this grandexperiment, but that's where we
find ourselves.

That is where we find ourselves. And because
Sarah wrote this book aboutspecies at risk, I asked her if
she resonated more with the ideathat species have intrinsic
value, or that species arerivets in an airplane that we
would like to keep flying.

Sarah Cox (19:46):
I think I'm both, actually, I'm an airplane and
rivets analogy person. And Ialso believe that every species
has an intrinsic value to exist,and in fact, that is recognized
in the preamble to Canada'sSpecies at Risk Act.

Canada's Species at Risk Act, otherwise known as
SARA. The preamble reads,'wildlife in all its forms, has
value in and of itself'.

Okay, cool, right. Like our economy may not
value the spotted owl, but atleast we have a law that says it
should be protected.

Yes, a federal law. BC has never passed any
endangered species legislationof its own, and the Federal
Species at Risk Act is for avariety of reasons, some of
which we discussed the last timeSarah Cox was on the show, much
weaker than its US counterpart.

I think it's time you reminded me.

Okay, I don't want to go too deep here, but
basically, there are some issueswith the way that SARA was
designed. For example, it allowspolitical influence to enter
into key decisions in listingand protecting at risk species.
And there are also some issueswith how it's implemented. Like,
a recent review noted that thegovernment regularly overshoots

(21:03):
its own deadlines fordesignating critical habitat and
publishing recovery strategies,often by years, sometimes by
decades. But the biggest issueis that SARA only applies to
federal land, which makes upabout 4% of Canada and only
about 1% of BC. So when aprovince like Ontario is gutting

(21:25):
its own species at risklegislation, or when a province
like BC has never adopted itsown species at risk legislation,
SARA doesn't apply. Not at leastuntil the situation gets very,
very bad.

Sarah Cox (21:39):
So we have this act. It looks pretty good on paper.
It gives the federal governmentthe option of stepping in if a
province isn't doing somethingto protect a species that we
know is at risk of extinction,and we know why it is at risk of
extinction. But the problem isthe federal government doesn't
do that. It has only done thatfor two species in the history

(22:01):
of the act. So in more than 20years, it hasn't done that for
the spotted owl.

Why not? Like, the point of the law is exactly
that to have the Feds step inwhen a province isn't doing
enough to protect a listedspecies, right? Like, why
haven't they?

It's complicated, and the truth is we don't really
know. I'm sure there's a lot ofback and forth behind the
scenes, but it's just not a verytransparent process. What we do
know often comes from lawsuits.For example, in 2020 Ecojustice,
an environmental law charityacting on behalf of the
Wilderness Committee, putpressure on the feds to enact an

(22:43):
emergency order, basicallyasking them to enforce SARA when
the province wouldn't, and stopthe deforestation of spotted owl
habitat by taking over thelogging permit process in BC.
And under the threat of losingthat provincial privilege, BC
finally took some action. Theyput a logging moratorium on two
valleys, which had, at the time,the very last three wild born

(23:07):
spotted owls in Canada.

Sarah Cox (23:09):
And then a couple more years go by, and even those
three owls are gone. And Iactually went to the valley
called the Spuzzum Valley, andat that time, the logging was
coming closer and closer to theboundary of the wildlife habitat
area where the last breedingpair had hatched three chicks
over a couple of years, andthose chicks were captured and

(23:32):
taken to the conservationbreeding center.

A breeding center?

Yes, Indeed.

Sarah Cox (23:37):
So as the population declined about 15 years ago, the
BC government decided to try tobreed owls in captivity and then
release them back into the wildto bolster populations that were
sharply in decline. But spottedowls are not falcons or condors,

(23:58):
and they do not like to breed incaptivity. So it has been an
uphill slog with biologists andother people doing their utmost
to try to hatch spotted owls incaptivity. Here we are, like 15
years later, and they have justnot been able to get the numbers

(24:18):
up enough to be able to releasethem back into the wild.

You might have heard of this breeding center
recently, actually. They did aValentine's Day fundraiser where
they offered that if you donate$5 they'll name a rat after your
ex and then feed it to an owl.

How romantic.

Yeah, I couldn't help but ask Sarah if she took
them up on it.

Sarah Cox (24:44):
I did not.

But she did visit the center, and she got to see
how they tried to breed andraise the owls. You'll have to
read her book for the details,but suffice it to say, she came
back with a soberingperspective.

Sarah Cox (24:56):
The experiment is not going well thus far. But it does
mean that we can still hold outa little hope of reintroduction,
and it means that politiciansdon't have to get up there and
say the spotted owl has beenextirpated from Canada on my
watch. However, as BC has pouredmillions of dollars into the

(25:20):
conservation breeding center, ithas also continued to sanction
clear cut logging in spotted owlhabitat, and that includes
logging in designated wildlifehabitat areas that the same
government set aside for SpottedOwl recovery.

Well, this sucks, but the whole situation
seems so similar to what'shappening with the mountain
caribou, right? We're continuingto destroy their habitat, while
on the other side, we spend lotsof money on last ditch efforts
like captive breeding programsand killing wolves, in that

(25:57):
case.

Exactly and just like how caribou have wolves,
spotted owls have their ownantagonist.

Sarah Cox (26:05):
One of the problems the spotted owl faces right now
is barred owls. And so barredowls traditionally, historically
were found on the eastern sideof the continent, but over
decades, they kind of hopscotchtheir way across the continent
of their own accord, and nowthey're well installed in the
Pacific Northwest.

I actually happen to have a nesting pair of barred
owls in my own backyard.Listen... that's them calling.

Mmm.

They're haunting and beautiful, and I love having
them there. And Mendel, barredowls look quite a bit like
spotted owls, to the point thatSarah told me that they're often
mistaken for them. But theseowls are not what they seem.
There are some key differences.

Sarah Cox (26:52):
Barred owls, unlike spotted owls, are a generalist
species. They eat like so manydifferent things, including
earthworms. They will nest inall kinds of places. They are
happy in suburbia. They're happyon the edge of a clear cut.
They'll take over a crow's nest.They're very adaptable, and they
have encroached on spotted owlterritory and are competing with

(27:16):
it for food in the PacificNorthwest. Then we face a
dilemma if we really do wantspotted owls back, either in the
States or in BC, we need to dosomething about the barred owls.

We need to... do something... about barred owls.

Which means we're killing them.

News Announcer 1 (27:37):
US Fish and Wildlife has a plan to save a
species of bird, but it wouldcome at the cost of killing
barred owls. Almost half amillion barred owls would be
killed to protect the spottedowl.

News Announcer 2 (27:47):
Saving one species of bird by killing
another. It seems extreme, butexperts say the spotted owl, it
is in a dire situation, andthinning out the population of a
main competitor may be the onlyway it survives.

Sarah Cox (28:01):
Oh yes. So in BC, we've been shooting and
relocating barred owls.Biologists are going out and
identifying areas, for example,in the valleys where there's
logging moratorium, wherespotted owls might be
reintroduced and recover. Andthey see a barred owl, it is
either being shot or relocated.

Okay, so we're not killing them everywhere.
We're just focusing on spottedowl habitat.

Yes, the breeding pair in my backyard is not
currently at risk.

But like the big question is, does it work? Does
removing barred owls actuallyhelp the spotted owls?

Yeah, so barred owl culls have been implemented
at scale in the United States.And what we know is thanks to
some scientific work done onexactly that question.

Sarah Cox (28:49):
They would take spotted owl territory, they
would divide it in half. Theywould cull barred owls in one
half, and they would leave themin the other half. And where
they didn't cull the barredowls, the spotted owl population
declined by about 12%.

In other words, it does help, even though it's
still pretty controversial.

Sarah Cox (29:09):
BC, of course, has gone about it far less
scientifically and with far lesstransparency in terms of how and
when and why they're eliminatingbarred owls.

So while barred owl culls have been shown to
benefit spotted owls in theUnited States right now in BC,
in the absence of a systemicapproach, in the absence of
robust habitat protections, youcould argue that it's not much
more than a way for the provinceto shield itself from any actual
federal enforcement.

Sarah Cox (29:42):
It is part of the BC government strategy, and
something they have told thefederal government they will do
as an illustration of how hardthey are working to try to save
and recover spotted owlpopulations.

Okay, just stepping back a sec, you've
introduced us to the situationin Canada where we're destroying
habitat for endangered specieson one hand and then
compensating for that in part bykilling another species.

Yes, and it's not just here in Canada. All kinds
of species, both native andintroduced, are being killed as
part of conservation effortsaround the world, cats, rats,
goats, stoats, squirrels, owls,wolves, beavers, bison, deer. It

(30:34):
seems like everywhere you look,we are killing something in the
name of conservation.

To say nothing of plants.

Oh, my God. Mendel, like, if we're talking
about killing plants, I would bewanted for mass murder in the
plant kingdom. Fortunately,Canada has no extradition policy
there.

Well, you're lucky... for now. But you know,
I hate to say it, but like thefact that we kill things in an
attempt to solve our problems...this is not going to be news for
most of our listeners. Adam, areyou suggesting that there is a
way out of this cycle ofviolence?

I mean, a way out? Probably not. But a way through?
Possibly, possibly. I did tellyou there was going to be light
at the end of the tunnel. Let'sreturn for a moment to the rivet
popper hypothesis.

Uh... final boarding call for Paul Erhlich's
airplane.

God, I would not step on board that aiplane.

You don't have a choice.

That is true. We are all on the airplane
together. Notice how the valueof the species in that analogy
is reduced basically just to asmall part of a larger whole.
That is the thing that weactually care about, right? The
ecosystem, the airplane.

I mean... that's the thing that feels icky about
this analogy. Because theserivets are all fungible, in a
sense, they're interchangeable,replaceable components. It
allows us to justify trading onefor another. We can we can kill
cormorants or wolves or owlsbecause it helps the airplane
stay in the air. It keeps theecosystem whole.

It's very utilitarian, and you know,
that's one way of looking at theworld. But I want to quote
another environmentalphilosopher at you, and that is
Timothy Morton. In their bookBeing Ecological, which helped
inspire this episode, they writethat quote, 'the whole is always

(32:34):
less than the sum of its parts.'

...What is that supposed to mean?

We'll find out together — after the break.

Okay, mid-roll, lightning round. Future
Ecologies! Independent! Listenersupported!
Patreon.com/futureecologies!Love you!
Welcome back. I'm Mendel

And I'm Adam.

And this is Future Ecologies, where today we
are discussing our distressingpropensity as a species to try
to kill our way out of ourproblems, even in conservation.
And Adam has... something. Iactually don't know. What do you
have?

I have another Sara to introduce you to.

Okay, so this episode has become a tale of
three Sara's.

It has.

We've got Sarah Cox, we've got SARA, the Species
at Risk Act in Canada, andnow...?

And now we have Dr. Sara Dubois.

Sara Dubois (33:50):
And I'm an adjunct professor at the University of
British Columbia in the appliedbiology department. My day job,
though, is as Chief ScientificOfficer with the BC SPCA.

I spoke to Sarah because she's at the forefront
in BC of a movement sometimesknown as compassionate
conservation.

And for those who don't know, the SPCA is...?

Short for the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals. And thereare versions of it all around
the world.

It is a protection agency. Sometimes it's the
police for animals, sometimes itis a sheltering agency. Overall,
we're there to advocate forthose who can't speak for
themselves.

In British Columbia, the BC SPCA is a
charity that has been charged bythe province with enforcing
animal cruelty laws.

Huh... okay, interesting. It runs animal
shelters, and it also enforcesthe law.

Yes, it is a donor-funded law enforcement
agency, among other things,

That's wild. So what's Sara's story?

Well, she started on this path pretty early. She
remembers telling her parentsthat she was going to grow up
and save wildlife.

Classic.

But when I got into university, I was told I
couldn't care about individualanimals and care about the
environment and conservation. Ihad to pick a lane. I could go
towards veterinary medicine andtake care of individual animals,
or I could go into conservationbiology, marine biology and take
care of ecosystems, but therewasn't a career for me to do

(35:31):
both.

And this duality that Sara encountered is
reflective of the polarizationin general between animal rights
groups and ecologists,biologists. we tend to fall into
camps that either care aboutindividuals or collectives, but
not both. And there's a momentthat underlines this even
earlier in our education, Iwould wager it's a universal

(35:55):
part of the high schoolexperience.

So we learn about animals by cutting them open and
in studying biology, I don'tknow about you, but in grade
eight, we dissected sheepeyeballs and frogs.

And apparently in university, she actually had to
dissect a cat.

Oh... I would not be capable.

You are not alone.

I think that that's really where people's kind of
mind and body disassociate inorder to do the hard work and be
okay with killing animals oropening them up, dissecting
them. Answering big problems canbe messy, and sometimes we just
kind of compartmentalize that.

And that can work for some of us, but this kind of
rationalization just doesn't sitright with lots of people.

I have so many students who come to me and say,
like, I want to work in biology,but I just can't dissect
animals, or I just can't imagineI have to go into the field and
kill animals as part of my job.And yet, these are people who
would make incrediblecontributions to our field, who
are creative thinkers, who arecritical thinkers, who could

(37:05):
make such a difference, butthey're turned off by the fact
that they have to choose whichlane they have to go through.

I get that. We've talked before about
botanists who specifically gotinto working with plants because
they just couldn't stomachkilling animals.

That's right. It is undeniable that the field of
biology can, at times, be akilling field.

So now, okay, we're trying to make amends for
changes that we made to thelandscape over many, many
generations. So how do we bringback species that should have
been here? And in the meantime,other animals have moved in, and
now we need to remove them, andthat's a very difficult decision
in order to restore landscapesback to what they evolved to be.

(37:52):
And you have to make trade-offs.Sometimes it comes with a lot of
emotion, and sometimes it comeswith very little emotion, just
decisions are made on paper, andthere's no regard for what
actually happens on the ground,and that affects not only the
non- human animals that arebeing removed and killed, but
also the people that are doingit.

Killing an animal for any reason is an emotionally
charged act, so emotionallycharged, in fact, that we often
distance ourselves from it withlanguage.

You can use softening words like euthanasia,
but some people just disguise itin things like harvest or
removal or cull eradication. Soall of these terminologies mean
something different, but yet weput them all in this kind of
mixed bucket of euthanasia tomake it sound better. And when

(38:42):
you think of what euthanasiameans in human terms, or
releasing someone from a life ofsuffering, we don't use the term
in the same way for non humananimals that we kill in
conservation.

Sure. I mean when you when you get down to
it, though, these are all justdifferent words for the same
thing — killing. But like,there's more than one way to...
skin a cat.

Oh...

Sorry. What I mean is that, like, call it what
you will, but in practice, itcould represent a whole spectrum
of behavior, from mercy tosadism. So what about the
language to describe how wekill?

Well, that brings us to one word with several
meanings. Allow me to introducethe curious concept of what is
and isn't humane.

I love talking about the definition of humane.
I think that it is really brokeninto kind of three definitions.
We have a scientific definition.We can measure how animals
suffer, we can measure distress,we can measure intensity, we can
actually scientifically measurehow that experience is for an
animal, physically andpsychologically. So that, to me,

(39:56):
is fundamental. We also have asocietal definition of humane.
So this is where people thinkthat something is acceptable
culturally. And then there'salso a lens of what is legally
humane. So what is the law saywould be cruelty act, for
example.

Yeah, it's funny to me though, that like in some
scientific contexts, there's alot of hesitation to acknowledge
that animals have feelings, thatthey might have consciousness,
that they have complex behavior,because we're so worried about
anthropomorphizing them, andyet, you know, here we are

(40:37):
acknowledging that it isimportant that they don't
suffer.

Because I think there is a recognition that
animals feel. We are animals. Weforget that sometimes. And yet,
when we have studied the livesof non human animals, we've
started to recognize, wow, theydo feel pain. There's sentience
there, there's memory, there'sjoy, there's pleasure, there's

(41:04):
depression. We see it in ourrelations with our companion
animals, but we often don'textend it to every life form.

For example, if we label an animal a pet, then of
course, we have to protect itfrom harm. It's like a member of
the family, right? If we labelit native or even endangered,
then in most cases, it will havesome kind of recognized right to
live. But if we label an animala pest or an exotic or an
invasive, then suddenly thoseprotections tend to disappear.

Yes, once we give an animal a label, it justifies
to certain people that they cando bad things to it.

And the thing about labels, Mendel, is that
they're sticky. If we give aspecies a label like pest, it
can give people free license toindulge their cruelty. On the
other hand, a label like exoticcan lead to some real conflict
and confusion within acommunity.

A lot of people don't know sometimes that a
species that is here actuallywas never intended to be here.
Hey, this animal's been here foras long as I've been here. Why
are we removing it now?

Like with the barred owl?

Exactly. Mendel, I kid you not. When I sat down to
interview Sara, she had a bigbarred owl on her t-shirt.

Hah! No way.

I do have an affinity for owls. And actually,
a part of my PhD research wasasking people to decide, Is
there a real reason for like,causing one animal harm to save
another? And I was surprised bythe results. I asked the general
public, and I assumed thegeneral public would say, No,
you shouldn't be causing harmfor spotted owls and killing

(42:43):
barred owls for their future,because it was so uncertain. And
then I asked biologists, and Ithought biologists would be
absolutely, let's remove all thebarred owls. This is important.

Well, what were the results? What did people
say?

As expected, the public was consistently opposed
to lethal interventions, whichwill come as no surprise to
anyone who has read comments onany news article or YouTube
video about wildlife culls, atleast as long as the animal
species in question isn'tconsidered a pest. But the
response from biologists andother professionals was

(43:20):
surprisingly mixed.

I mean, biologists are people too, I
guess.

Yes, biologists are people too, Mendel... and
we're the folks that are oftencharged with overseeing culls
for conservation. And I thinkthat one of the reasons that we
might be divided about whetheror not we should do these things
is that most of us have seenlethal approaches fail.

I've always been fascinated by this, this
conflict of, when is itjustified to kill animals? And
that's really where, I think ourtraining as biologists have told
us if there's an end goal thatis going to increase
biodiversity and achieve theconservation outcomes that you
have set out, then that's gonnabe the best choice. But at the

(44:04):
end of the day, we actuallydon't always achieve our
conservation goals. They failmany times. And in the meantime,
we've killed a lot of animals toget there. And for what purpose
we have to ask ourselves, wasthis really justifyed?

Wait, how often do these things just fail
outright?

Um... it happens. I should mention that the best
record that we have on theoverall success rate of lethal

Hmm. Islands, of course.
interventions in conservation isa website called the Database of
Island Invasive SpeciesEradications.

We punch above our weight. Islands are the classic
case study for stuff like this.Anyhow, a recent review
published of over 1500eradication attempts on over
1000 islands concluded thatthere was an 88% success rate,
which I would say is prettygood, actually.

88% is good if you're taking a test! But like,
there's 12% of these thingswhere a bunch of animals died
effectively for nothing.

That's right, these projects can fail and
stall out for all sorts ofreasons. And because of all that
uncertainty, Sara hears frompeople concerned about projects
like these all the time. Andthose folks ask her...

Can't you stop these projects? They're
inhumane, they're cruel. There'sno sense to them. They're not
actually meeting the objectives,whether it's the wolf cull,
whether it's the owl cull,whether it's deer culls, they're
not actually achieving theirgoals. And in the meantime,
hundreds of 1000s of animals arebeing killed. So why can't you
stop that?

And all of this controversy and vitriol caused
Sara to stop and ask,

Are there criteria that are justifiable from a very
objective lens?

And this is where the International Consensus
Principles for Ethical WildlifeControl began.

The principles came from conversations over many
years of meeting colleagues atconferences who had the same
moral dilemmas as I was havingin my work. They were working
with other species across theworld, encountering government
decisions that led to largescale killing of these animals,

(46:16):
and it was being condoned andfunded by taxpayers. And
sometimes these would fail. Mostoftentimes they would fail
,these programs. And theseprofessionals in the field were
just like, you know, why are wecontinuing to do this? We're not
learning from our mistakes.

Oh my god, you said there was gonna be light at
the end of the tunnel. Youdidn't say it was gonna be a
list.

Who doesn't love a list? I mean, folks know what
they signed up for.

Okay, hit me.

Okay. There are seven principles, and I
personally like them bestphrased as questions. Let's
start with

Principle Bot (46:56):
Principle one

So the first question that we should be
asking ourselves when we'relooking at these dilemmas is,
can the problem be mitigated bychanging human behavior? Can we
do something that our ownactions can change the situation
before we have to take anintervention?

Well, that seems like the reasonable place to
start.

Yes. Principle one asks, can we be the change that
we wish to see in the worldbefore we start killing things?

Principle two

Are the harms serious enough to warrant
wildlife control? So what'shappening? Is it just that
raccoons are getting into yourgarbage, or is it that raccoons
are eating sea birds across anisland and removing entire
populations?

Raccoons eating garbage? That's an ecosystem
service!

At the very least, it probably doesn't merit the
death sentence, even if theraccoons do always look guilty,

They're the world's cutest convicts. But
like I imagine, this is whereyou start to get friction
between your hardliners, right,like the people for whom no harm
justifies killing, and theothers who would say it's
justified if we have anecosystem or a species to save.

Yes, and then it becomes a question of how much
harm is too much harm? What isthe threshold that we're
setting? How do we determinethat? These are really hard
questions, and you know theanswers are probably going to
depend a lot on science and alsoa little bit on cultural

(48:28):
beliefs. This is a principlethat requires democratic
engagement to determine

Principle three

Is the desired outcome clear and achievable,
and will it be monitored? So arewe killing for the sake of
killing and waiting to see whathappens, or is there a clear
plan, and how are we gonnamonitor it's actually working
and measure it over time?

This is it for me, right? Like, if we're
avoiding killing for killingsake, then we should at least be
demonstrating that there is areasonable chance of success,
that we can even define whatthat success looks like.

Exactly. Plus, do we have a plan to assess whether
what we did worked or not? Inother words...

How do we know that we've actually achieved what we
wanted to or did we just kill awhole lot of animals for
nothing?

Principle four

The fourth question is, does the proposed method
carry the least animal welfarecost to the fewest animals? And
this wording is veryintentional, because we know
there will be an animal welfarecost to an animal dying, even if
the death is humane,scientifically. Animals have an
interest in living, and so wewant to ensure that there is the

(49:43):
fewest animals that are removedas possible, and it's done in
the best method that we haveavailable,

I see. So once we decide to take action and
that our actions have arealistic chance of success,
that's when we look at ourmethods, and the work is
basically to practice harmreduction.

Yeah, methods are a question of both efficacy and
ethics.

Principle five

The fifth question is, have community values been
considered alongside scientific,technical and practical
information? So we can try topredict what's going to happen
and once these animals areremoved, we can try to ensure
the best methods possible are inhand. But at the end of the day,
if we're doing this in acommunity that's completely
opposed, it's not going to last.We've had sabotages of projects,

(50:34):
trespassing, a lot of pushbackon different conservation
initiatives, and rightly so insome cases where decisions have
been made without reallyconsideration for the animals or
the long term impacts. So havingpeople buy in this is your
social license that you need toproceed with these types of
projects.

Yeah, I think this is probably an important
moment to remind ourselves thatpublic pushback can shut things
down.

Oh, totally. I mean concerns about animal
rights or welfare, eye poppingtaxpayer expenses, we have seen
public outcry stop the cullingof donkeys in Death Valley, and,
you know, more recently,postponing a cull of fallow deer
on Sidney island in my backyard.This principle is tough, because
public engagement is noguarantee of success, but if you

(51:26):
ignore it, you're definitelygoing to fail.

The sixth question is the control action part of a

Principle six
systematic long term managementprogram? Is this a one and done?
We're going to go shoot a bunchof barred owls? Or is there a
long term plan that alsoincorporates habitat restoration
for spotted owls?

Basically, if you're not planning long term,
you're not planning for success.

This reminds me of Alberta's rat control
program, actually.

Does it?

Yeah, basically there, to this day, are
effectively zero rats in theprovince of Alberta, because of
constant vigilance. The ratcontrol zone has been running
since the 1950s with theprovince of Saskatchewan, and
it's all about this consistent,systemic approach.

Yes, it's an interesting bit of Canadiana and
an impressive success story, aswell as a reminder that failure
for a project like this canhappen at any time if the
management activities were tostop. A long term approach is
essential.

Principle seven

Are the decisions warranted by the specifics of
the situation, rather than anegative categorization of the
animals? And this is where thelabels comes in. This is where,
once we give an animal a labelof being over abundant in a
certain area, then we justify toourselves that it should be
removed.

In other words, don't judge a bookworm by its
label. This final principle wasadded basically as a failsafe to
prevent actions that are takenagainst species that we just
really don't like. We might callthem pests or aliens or invasive
or noxious. But the point hereis that every situation is
unique, and we should, you know,consider the specifics without

(53:22):
prejudice before we make anydecisions.

Agreed. End of list?

End of list!

End of list

And if we arrive at the end of this list, and
we've determined that usinglethal force to manage a
wildlife conflict is still thebest possible thing that we can
do. At that point, according tothese principles, at least, we
can say that it's ethical. And Iknow that this won't satisfy
everyone, but at least it's astep towards breaking down the

(53:59):
duality between the world ofanimal welfare and the world of
ecology and biology.

Well, thank you, Adam, thank you, Sara. I can see
the appeal of these principles.So I guess now I would ask, is
anybody using them? Are theygetting any uptake?

Well, there are examples of projects that have
incorporated these principlesinto their design, but I think
it is fair to say that they havenot been widely adopted yet, at
least according to Sarah Cox.

Sarah Cox (54:41):
No, I don't think people were aware of that work.
I don't think that has reachedthe mainstream. I don't think it
has reached government.Unfortunately, it's definitely
not the lens through which we'remaking decisions in Canada.

As should be abundantly clear from the fact
that we are still killing barredowls, wolves, and other species,
seemingly without regard andwithout a long term plan here in
Canada.

Yeah...

Despite this, I have actually found these
principles quite useful in myown work, and I will say that my
talks with both Sarahs left mefeeling oddly hopeful for our
capacity to integrate theselessons together. When I spoke
to Sara Dubois, she told me thatin the future, she thinks we

(55:29):
might not have to be sopolarized around the issue of
animal welfare.

I am in a mode now of doing a lot of teaching and
working with a lot of youngpeople who are aspiring
biologists, and I wanted to sayto them that you can still be a
biologist with a heart. BecauseI think in my training, I was
intentionally hazed in a waythat was like, you care too much

(55:54):
about these animals, you can'tcare about them and still do
your job. So I think that thereare opportunities for people
with compassion and creative andcritical thinking skills to be a
part of helping the naturalworld, but we shouldn't exclude
them because they have a heart.

And Sarah Cox, despite going into this
reporting feeling verydiscouraged about the outlook
for species at risk in Canada,found her own silver lining.

Sarah Cox (56:22):
I really went into this, you know, a little doom
and gloomy, like the situationis a disaster. Look at these
crazy things that we're doing,like how much money it's
costing. We've got this allbackwards. People don't
understand how much is at riskright now in Canada. And I did
come out of it more hopeful. Indoing this research, I met

(56:44):
people right across the countrywho are actually doing
something. There is so muchgoing on right across the
country, and I found instancesof actions that are being taken
to try to turn things around fora species at risk of extinction
that we're both having success,but also looking at complex

(57:07):
issues.

That's why we're here.

Yeah, but I do want to end a little differently
today. I'd like to quote theconclusion of a recent paper
that I read.

First a list, now a quote?!

Yes

It better be good.

I really think it is. And it's a really unusual
paper. It was authored by anumber of proponents of
compassionate conservation, andit's called Emotion as a Source
of Moral Understanding inConservation.

Okay, I can't say no to that.

It begins, quote, 'conservation has been
pluralistic in its goals andvalues since its inception, and
compassionate conservation is noexception. Even among our author
group, there are differences ofopinion. Some of us disallow
that harming individuals toachieve conservation objectives
would ever be the best course ofaction available. Others among

(57:59):
us acknowledge thispossibility.'
They continue, 'if we were toendorse any sort of blanket
stance, it would be thatconservation should strive to
operate within the constraintsof a commitment to non violent
coexistence. And if cases arisewhere it appears impossible to
uphold this commitment, harmshould not be inflicted with a

(58:22):
hardened sense of inevitability,but with grief and a due sense
of humility that acknowledgessome amount of moral failure has
occurred.'

There it is.

They conclude, 'we seek to inhabit the world in
ways that respect and affirm alllife. We aim to be kind, to love
broadly, to value widely and tofeel deeply, even when feeling
hurts. And we hope to helpcultivate a conservation
community in which sparing alife for love is not viewed as

(58:56):
weakness, even when the life inquestion is not human.'

Well, thank you, Adam. I just have one more
question.

Shoot... wait, no! Don't shoot!

Do you think... do you think it's possible, in
practice, to square this circle?To value the whole and the parts
equally — the rivets and theairplane?

I don't know. I think it's a central question of
being human, right? Of beinghumane. You remember Timothy
Morton, right?

Yeah, the whole is always less than the sum of
its parts.

The very same. I think that they summed it up
pretty well when they wrote 'theenvironmental approach could be
described as taking care of thewhole at the expense of
individuals, while the animalrights approach could be
described as taking care ofindividuals at the expense of
the whole. We can start to breakthrough this difficult impasse

(01:00:05):
by noting that what is calledenvironment is just life forms
and their extended genomicexpressions. Think of spiders,
webs and beavers dams. When youthink this way, you are already
thinking about wholes and partsin a different way, and when you
think of things like that,there's really no difference

(01:00:26):
between thinking about what iscalled an ecosystem and what is
called a single life form.'
Let's leave it there.

Mendel Skulski (01:00:47):
This episode of Future Ecologies was produced by
Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski,with help from Eden Zinchik, and
music by Thumbug, AdrianAvendaño and Sunfish Moon Light,
cover art by Ale Silva, and thevoices of Sarah Cox and Sara

(01:01:07):
Dubois.
Be sure to check out Sarah Cox'sbook, Signs of Life — Field
Notes From the Front Lines ofExtinction. Special thanks to
Tal Engel. You can findcitations and a transcript of
this episode on our website,futureecologies.net. As always,

(01:01:27):
this show is brought to you byour amazing community of
supporting listeners. Become oneyourself and get all the perks
at futureecologies.net/join. Ifyou like what we're doing, leave
us a rating, a review or acomment wherever you're
listening. Better yet, tell afriend! Okay, 'til next time.

All Episodes

FE6.4 - Humane Being

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Boysober

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}FE6.4 - Humane Being