NO MAN’S LAND: When wildlife intrudes into human spaces, who are the real interlopers?
The questions raised are profound. What right do we have to block, translocate or destroy an animal or plant that gets in our way? How does one balance the interests of humans with those of a bear or monkey? How do we decide what is a pest and what is wildlife?
EDWARD POSNETT: Anyone who has considered the messy ethics of the mousetrap will appreciate Mary Roach’s Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (originally titled as Animal Vegetable Criminal), a provocative and engaging exploration of our evolving relationship with the rest of nature. At the heart of the book is the question of whether we can live alongside other creatures, from mice to elephants. Roach is fascinated by what happens when this relationship is strained: when animals and plants “break” human laws, that is vandalise, intrude, harass, trespass, jaywalk, maim and, in the case of elephants and leopards, kill. Roach pays great attention to these species, their habits, behaviour and beauty, but this is really a book about humans and our attempts to find an uneasy accord with the creatures that get in our way…
Roach acknowledges, we cannot speak of animals breaking human laws; animals just do what animals do and it is our own incursion into their space that creates conflict that Roach elegantly calls “the heavy footfall of humanity”. As one Indian forestry official notes of marauding elephants in West Bengal: “We are disturbing them.” The word “disturbed”, in all its senses, neatly captures the tragic state of many of the creatures in this book: elephants drunk on home brew, bears sated on restaurant food waste, and an emaciated puma that resorts to stalking humans because its digestive tract is blocked by a running shoe.
In the past, “criminal” species were simply destroyed and Roach describes in excruciating detail the bloody and hubristic campaigns to eliminate “pests” such as crows, blackbirds and coyotes. Not only were these initiatives morally dubious, but they also proved ineffective and expensive. Today, ecologists and government agencies have shifted to conflict resolution… Roach’s most emotive chapters deal with the life-or-death challenges posed by our contact with large mammals such as bears, elephants and leopards…
She travels to the ski resort of Aspen, Colorado, where black bears are drawn to restaurant rubbish bins and homes by the promise of calorie-rich food waste, maple syrup, honey and even ice-cream… Roach clearly feels frustrated by what she sees. Aspen, she notes, is a gilded pocket of a rich country (where “flowers bloom in fall, and women’s hair goes ash-blond as they age”); the “bear problem” is really a human problem, and one that could be resolved by better compliance with waste regulations, enforcement and greater investment.
Aspen’s challenges pale in comparison with those of West Bengal, the Indian state where herds of hungry elephants, isolated in small pockets of forest, wander into villages in search of food, cotton fibre and even haaria, the local home brew (elephants like to drink alcohol, but lack the enzyme required to break it down). Here people have much more to lose than Aspen’s elites; a herd of elephants may trample crops and humans alike (according to Roach, elephants have killed 403 people in the state over the last five years). And yet they are loth to kill elephants because of their sacred status…
The questions raised by this book are profound. What right do we have to block, translocate or destroy an animal or plant that gets in our way? How does one balance the interests of humans with those of a bear or monkey? How do we decide what is a pest and what is wildlife? And who gets to decide: local people, bureaucrats or conservationists? Wisely, Roach largely resists clearcut answers, allowing her interviewees the space to speak. Towards the end, she reflects that we’d do well to start small, and accept the creatures around us. SOURCE…
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