On the Fourth of July I took a bus to the Marin Headlands, just north of
San Francisco. I spent much of the day hanging out by the lagoon,
taking advantage of the opportunity to observe, up close, a Snowy Egret
foraging for lunch. I mused that when I'm hungry, I have the opportunity
to buy a snack somewhere pretty easily, but the egret, no matter how
hungry it is, has to wait until it can catch something. No corner store.
I further mused that wild animals, especially wild predators, don't
have food security in the sense that most American humans conceptualize
it. When the world functions as it should this works. It certainly
seemed to be working for my buddy the egret, who regularly broke out in a
short run followed by a sudden dip of mouth to water. I left with a
renewed respect for the life of the wild and a new resolve to do my part
to ensure that our wild kin have a fair chance at feeding themselves.
That egret was among the lucky ones. We humans have taken over so much
of the world's habitat, hardly aware of the toll this takes on the
ability of the others, the wild ones, to meet their needs. Everyday we
take more and more to satisfy our wants.
We have choices. One choice is to admit our addictions, to take stock of
how we got to this point, of how we can free ourselves of our unhealthy
habits and take the painfully difficult steps needed for our currently
industrial culture to live clean and sober in terms of how we interact
with the larger world. Another, infinitely easier in the short term but
ultimately a murder/suicide, is to hide under a pillow about the
consequences of our past choices and do whatever is necessary to
maintain the status quo. This is where expensive, environmentally
devastating energy sources come in. Gas and oil from fracking, coal from
mountain-top removal, oil from tar sands are at once shining examples
of human inventiveness in the face of strong incentives, and admissions
that we've sunk to the level of someone who steals from their mother in
order to get their next cocaine fix.
Some of us are choosing the first option, or at least attempting to
create space for it. We actively oppose actions that further destroy the
earth, including tar sands extraction. We have a tangle of reasons for
doing so. For many the deal breaker is the increase in climate-changing
CO2 that results from tar sands oil extraction. Other major reasons
include the destruction of cultures, and individual bodies, of the First
Nation peoples living where the tar sands are being mined. For others
it's the sacrifice of individual autonomy of people who live along the
proposed Keystone pipeline to the needs of the pipeline. There is also
the very real danger of pipeline ruptures, as has been experienced in
Michigan, Arkansas, and other places.
This blog extracts one thread from the tangle, the attacks on wildlife
from the old-growth boreal forest the Canadian tar sands is located in,
and along the proposed pipeline. The blog is an outgrowth of an affinity
group formed to educate ourselves and others about the threats to
wildlife from tar sands extraction. In order to present a variety of
perspectives, we will take turns writing blog posts. We invite your
feedback, activism, an most of all, your engagement in protecting other
species from the effects of human excesses.
For the wild ones, and the wild in us all,
Possum
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