Ethos

In early November of 2005, a Canadian was apparently attacked and killed by a pack of wolves. While we await the official report on the role of wolves in this attack, there is tremendous speculation on what this means for wolf recovery in North America and across the globe.

I’ve been waiting to weigh in on this subject until we know more about what happened. Unfortunately, some of the public commentary that has emerged in the meantime is rubbish. So I’m reposting an excellent commentary from Amaroq Weiss and Laura Jones, Co-Moderators of the Pacific West Wolf Information Network (PW-WIN). If you would like to learn more about the network, please visit the PW-WIN yahoo group.

cheers, Bill
~

PW-WIN Friends and Colleagues:

While we ordinarily confine postings on PW-WIN to wolf-related information in our region, occasionally something exterior to the Pacific west warrants our bringing it to your attention. Such is the case regarding a recent incident in Canada that is being investigated as a potential fatal wolf attack on a human.

Early investigations are reporting that the November 8th death of a 22 year-old man in northern Saskatchewan was caused by an apparent wolf attack. The reported incident occurred in an area of Saskatchewan where it is widely known that wolves have become highly habituated to people who have purposely fed them, sought encounters with them or left food attractants such as garbage unsecured. It is also an area where domestic dogs have been allowed to run wild and form feral packs. For a news story on the incident, see
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-11-17/34683.html

If, in fact, the individual’s death was caused by wolves, it is extremely unfortunate and signifies the danger that can be caused when wild animals become highly habituated to humans, an unsafe situation no matter the type of wildlife species. To prevent animals from being accustomed to humans, one should always be respectful, keep a safe distance from and take care not to habituate wild animals, especially large carnivores, to humans. As all losses of human life are tragic, we grieve for the victim and for his surviving family.

Such losses should also be kept in perspective as to their relative occurrence. Although there have been a handful of incidents involving aggression or attacks by wolves that had become food- habituated to humans or where a wolf injured a human who interfered with a wolf attack on a dog, there have been no recorded incidences of healthy wild wolves attacking human beings in North America for the last 100 years. Arguments regarding the dangerousness of wolves should be tempered by an understanding of their relative occurrence compared to attacks on or deaths of humans caused by other animals.

For instance, in the United States each year, an average of 17 people are killed by dogs, and approximately 1.2 million dog bites occur, 800,000 of which are serious enough to send people to the emergency room. Furthermore, U.S. Department of Labor data indicates that between 1992-1997, there were 142 work-related human fatalities caused by cattle and 95 caused by horses and mules, in which people were mauled, charged, rammed, gored or knocked down. In addition, each year in the U.S., an average of 200 people are killed in deer- car collisions, 30-120 die from bee or wasp stings, and an average of 30 die from fire ant stings.

While people should always maintain caution around and respect for large carnivores, such as wolves, bears and mountain lions, and should never feed wild animals or take other actions that cause wild animals to lose fear of humans, the fact remains that chances of a dangerous encounter with large carnivores in the wild are remarkably slim compared to the risks associated with simply driving our cars or associating with domestic animals, something most of us do repeatedly on a daily basis.

Regards to you all,

Amaroq Weiss and Laura Jones
Co-moderators, PW-WIN
Defenders of Wildlife

Posted to the PW-Win yahoo group on 23 December 2005.

Image: Frank Franzetta, Wolves, 1965.

William Lynn :: Feb.15.2006 :: Animal Studies, Environmental Studies, Ethics, Wolves :: Comments Off

This work reveals the systematic militarization of public opinion by the three successive American Presidential administrations under whose leadership the United States confronted its most militant opponents in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, namely, the regime of Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda Islamist movement. Focusing on the period beginning with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and continuing through the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the work exposes how each administration undermined democratic deliberation by outfitting the citizenry exclusively with those understandings that would make war seem both obligatory and inevitable. Together, these understandings represent what I call the “official American war ideology”: an obfuscating system of beliefs that enabled the “war on terror” to proceed without significant domestic dissent until its controversial extension to Iraq in 2003. The work demonstrates how the terms of this ideology – repeated time and again in televised Presidential speeches, press conferences, and mainstream news programs – have been strategically deployed by top administration officials. It argues that a concerted interrogation of these terms is necessary in order to counter their corrupting influence. The work also situates the official American war ideology in the larger context of conflict over governance in the petroleum-rich gulf. It demonstrates how the terms of this ideology functioned to defend and extend US dominance, in part by undercutting the conditions for democratic debate in the U.S. over energy policy and over the militaristic and religiopolitical foundations of global American power. Despite the readily apparent damage they have done to democratic deliberation and despite their central role in the intensification of conflict in the gulf, the terms of the American war ideology have yet to be adequately questioned. By extending understanding of the ideological manipulations that have functioned to justify war since 1990, this work seeks both to challenge the dominant terms of the public debate on U.S. foreign policy in the gulf and to promote a genuinely deliberative reconsideration of the terms and implications of the “war on terror.” …[T]he American people have been shepherded into war under highly debatable terms, thinking that wars in the Gulf, or in parts of Asia and Africa where its opponents to its Gulf presence conduct their operations, are wars over existence, not over a highly troubling, unaccountable organization of power in the Gulf, “wars on terrorism” not “wars over the Gulf.” The people were told that America’s most militant opponents took up arms against them out of hatred alone, that the world produces evil and it is within their sense of responsibility to rid the world of it. They backed war because they believed that the conflict had nothing to do with earthly considerations of power and human needs. These beliefs must be corrected, and the tide reversed’.

Andrew Davison. 2005. Conquering Hearts and Minds: The American War Ideology in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, 1990-2003. Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press. Available through tulumba.com and amazon.com

Andy Davison :: Feb.01.2006 :: Politics :: Comments Off