Originally Written for Quora
I’m going to use this question about the dhole, a wonderful but little known animal that inhabits parts of Asia but is 75% absent from its original habitat, to make a point that no one seems to want to hear. The first thing I noticed in this National Geographic story are the words used to define the story category: “Photo Ark”. To me, that’s a great way to think about endangered species, particularly the ones that have little to no chance of recovering from their current status and made the Endangered Species list decades ago. To send out the message that Nat Geo is compiIing a photographic ark obviously means something. I have posted a couple of screenshots so you can read the basics on the dhole and see what they look like. Like most caniids, I am drawn to their handsome, wolf-like features. Though wildly different upon initial inspection, the dhole has similar features to all sorts of wild dogs found all over the world. I must admit that while I have at least a general understanding of most canids, sort of a “working knowledge”, other than the name “Dhole”, I knew very little about them as a species.
Of course, the second thing that struck me was just how few of them remain, 4,500 to 10,500 individuals. This is roughly half the number of African Wolf Dogs which, as the name suggests, can be found in South Africa and just a handful of countries to the north. It’s historic range was throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Dozens of creatures are down to similar numbers, numbers that have been holding onto existence using tooth and claw and every bit of their instinct to thrive when conditions are stacked heavily against them. How would we view our own chances if there were just 20,000 of us remaining following what could have only been apocalyptic events to bring our kind to the knife’s edge of being? With this and other posts, I’m trying my darndest to wrap some “shock and awe” perspective around what’s happening to the planet. It is abundantly clear that even with biological scares like (in recent history) HIV, Influenza, COVID, Ebola, Bird Flu, Hantavirus, West Nile, and on, that we’ve become numb to the potential for something as big to come along as the Black Plague (aka Black Death, 1346 – 1353) which killed 25 to 50 million people in just seven years. Granted, times have changed, but COVID should be a reminder of how we had to enlist the help from doctors and scientists from all over the world to bring to bear their collective knowledge to come up with a solution while the clock was ticking on something which quite easily could have been much worse. This clearly reflects the extents to which we will go to save ourselves but, even then, nothing seems to shake us as we look to others to save our lives.
Credit Wikipedia
Credit Wikipedia
If that same effort, say, over a six year period, were put into saving threatened and endangered species, I believe we could have turned things around for some of the most ecologically important species. It’s amazing what we can do when pressed hard for results.
In the mid-60’s, my grandmother took me the one of the larger zoos back East and even as a child of preschool age, I was imprinted by seeing what were clearly wild animals stuck in cages and steel and concrete mini-habitats. I went some thirty years before I took a chance because my girlfriend at the time had never been to a zoo and had a strong desire to visit one. I really liked this girl and thought I could set my feelings aside for one day. I know that most people don’t feel the same way I do on many fronts. Besides, I was just a young child during that first ill-fated foray. Who was I to stop her from having an experience that millions of others enjoy every year?! The Denver Zoo was known for having a very good wolf exhibit and I had been fascinated by wolves for my entire life, reading numerous books and catching every documentary I could find on the subject. I thought I could “tough it out” for one day at one of the most progressive zoos in the country. But almost from the get-go as we were buying tickets, I began to get “cold feet”. I had lied to myself in an effort to make someone else happy. I managed to fake my way through the other exhibits (as I did not wish to have a negative impact on her experience) until we got to the wolf enclosure and, as much as I wanted to spend a few moments admiring them, I began to shed some uncontrolled tears while doing my best to quell my reaction and keep her from seeing it (I must be a decent actor because she didn’t notice).
What got to me the most was due to simply knowing too much about wolves to see them in captivity. They are an iconic symbol of everything that is pure and wild. The alpha male was probably around six years old and 120 pounds of sheer and magnificent masculine beauty. Predominantly light grey and white (grey wolves, aka, timberwolves come in a variety of colors from various shades of grey to reddish brown to all white, and all black) he was what most people think of when they hear the word “timberwolf”. It was just my girlfriend and I at the exhibit and he and I locked eyes as I watched him pace back and forth on a 6″ deep x 12″ wide groove the wolves had cut by pacing along the fence line at the front 30-feet of the enclosure. These are animals that have home ranges of up to 500 square miles and regularly travel between 20 and 50 miles in a single day. Talk about pent up energy which leads to stress, anxiety, and depression. His angst was palpable as was, I’m certain, my own. Today, some thirty years later, I can still sense his pieycing, highly intelligent eyes looking straight into my soul. I distinctly recall marveling at his masterfully efficient gait as he paced. I honestly believe he could feel my sadness and empathy for his situation. I require a lot of personal space to be comfortable and mile upon mile of open space in order to recreate and live happily. As much as I wanted to stay and observe both he and his incredible pack, we were there for just ten or fifteen minutes. When we were done at the zoo, we spent the evening having dinner and talking about a new class my girlfriend was about to start teaching. She was a chemistry professor at a Christian college in Denver. I do not remember what it was that ended the relationship other than the fact that I’d soon be moving to Durango but we weren’t together long enough for her to hear of my aversion to zoos. She had had a good time and that was all that I had cared about. The someday for telling her my genuine feelings never came. My current and by any and all means, final wife, and I feel almost exactly the same about wild things and wild places and our mutual love of nature is one of our primary connections. We prefer dogs to kids.
It has been another thirty-plus years and I’ve not been to another zoo, not even to take my daughter when she was young but all too impressionable. She’s twenty-six now and I don’t believes she’s gone to one of her own volition. She is her father’s daughter. The same goes for aquatic theme parks, though her mother once took her to the grand opening of a Sea World, near San Antonio. While knowing of my feelings on the subject, she took our then seven year-old daughter without informinng me of her plans (taking her out of state without informing the other parent was a clear breech of our parenting plan). Suffice it to say, it had the desired impact on me. What some people will do in the name of pure vindictiveness.
Between zoos and many of the conservation programs which work with them, we have literally researched many important species to death (or, followed them as they made their debut onto the threatened or endangered species lists) with just five to thirty years remaining on their respective clocks. Make no mistake, I am all for research and education, but when it comes to the treatment of the creatures involved, there must be limits.
I want to be clear. I am certainly not opposed to conservation programs. That would be nothing short of just plain stupid. They need to continue but without a reliance on zoos. Almost like the separation of church and state, they should continue on parallel path with more aggressive conservation efforts put in place to expedite the issues around key species that are almost gone and putting a real end to poaching and outright slaughter, and habitat loss as it relates to prioritized species. As an example, the American Wild Horse and the African Wild Dog. rhinos, highland gorillas, the Big Cats, wolves, elephants, and, of course, the dhole. These are but a few of the species that can still be salvaged but action needs to take place in the present, not after we’ve researched these animals for yet another ten years. I’m sorry, but they may no longer be here to study. Education and study efforts should be ongoing but targeting the next wave of species that are clearly in trouble, mostly having to do with loss of habitat. Establish new programs surrounding the next wave of creatures that will one day soon require intervention. I see it as a two-pronged approach. Long-term research and education on creatures not yet in their 11th hour, and short-term aggressive conservation measures to provide absolutely necessary aid to species in dire need of our help. In the end, we cannot save every species but we can still save many. We just don’t have the kind of conservatiion programs in place to ramp things up as it becomes necessary to save the most endangered species today. And last but not least, these programs must be afforded “teeth” so that when it becomes necessary to fight for the animals they’re trying to protect they are able to react with more than just words.
For the sake of discussion, let’s say that my childhood reaction to zoos and what I think of them is valid. I realize that zoos have enabled us to study many species that would otherwise be diffucult to study in the field, but for how long and at what cost? After so many decades -long studies have aready gathered the necessary information surrounding the long-term survival of many keystone animals, I believe we’ve got to put an end to zoos. We are long past the point of diminishing returns. If we take all of what I’ve said above as fact, we need to take an urgent look at this huge and amorphous issue and put some definition around it. To take a sound, pragmatic approach to mitigating the vast expanse of damage we’ve already done. We need to set worldwide protocols and place definitive timelines (deadlines) around the species that are at the highest risk but could still be saved. And. we need to be able to fire back when fired upon!
This is extremely difficult for me to even say, but in looking at wildlife conservation as a whole, there simply isn’t enough time remaining relative to current funding levels and tactics to save every species on the endangered species list. It’s already too late for certain species. We need to take a much more pragmatic view based on what is truly possible. What could be accomplished if we went at this global problem much more aggressively and if we did all the right things from this point forward and started today?! We won’t know until we engage the problem head-on, in a highly structured manner, and provide hard push-back to anyone or anything that gets in the way.
In the meantime, we can look for the most proactive wildlife programs currently operating and find out what we can do to help expedite things in real time with an emphasis on the word “NOW”! When it comes to species that have been on the endangered species list for decades, there simply isn’t enough time remaining for what amounts to political diplomacy.
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Thank you.
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