This week, the World Wildlife Fund released a chilling survey showing that half of the animals in the world have disappeared since 1970. The report did not interrupt the squabbling in Washington, or the violent videos pouring through the Internet, not even for a minute. For animal lovers like me, it was major news, another wake-up call for us to consider what we are doing to animals, and to the planet they depend on for their existence.
A century ago, the naturalist Henry Beston (Outermost House) called upon human beings to find a wiser and more mystical understanding of animals. In his time, animals were still plentiful, the idea that human beings might drive them from the earth, or that climate change would kill off countless species had not yet occurred to anyone. His plea is much more urgent today than it was even then. Animals that are not pets are disappearing from the world at a much more rapid rate than was previously believed.
Beston’s book helped spark a new movement, it called itself the animal rights movement, and a century later it has become clear that the movement – I believe he would have hated it – has not developed a clear notion for the rights of animals beyond not abusing them, and removing them from contact with most people.
Stopping the abuse of animals is a good thing, but it is a different thing to consider and embrace genuine rights for them. Many animal lovers abhor the term “rights” for animals and prefer the idea of animal “welfare” instead. They argue that animals ought not be afforded human notions of rights, rather they need to be given protections and treated well. I believe animals are entitled to rights, but I would not define these rights in the way animal rights groups like PETA or the newly-politicized U.S. Humane Society and A.S.P.C.A. now do. None of these organizations has anything resembling a vision for keeping animals in our world and helping the people who own, live and work with them.
I have been thinking about the rights of animals for some time, especially since I’ve been writing about the New York Carriage Horses. What, I wonder, would genuine rights for animals be, beyond issues of abuse, rescue and mistreatment?
– Animals have the right to survive in the world. Human development, greed and arrogance are killing many, according to the WWW, climate change and global warming killing many more. If New York City can accommodate trucks, buses, giant office buildings and condos, it can make room for the horses, also citizens of New York. The right of animals needs to be codified and protected from human development, it is becoming clear that there will be few, if any animals in the world unless they are protected from the deprivations of people. In this context, the New York Carriage Horses could not be banished from New York, the city would have to provide accommodations that kept them in the city, safe, healthy and present among us.
– The rights of animals can only be protected if the rights of the people willing to live, work and be with them are also considered and protected. People who own animals – circuses, carriage drivers, pony ride providers, farmers, animal lovers – need help and support keeping animals. People have the right to adopt dogs and cats, even if they work and are not wealthy. Farmers who struggle to care for their animals need assistance in order to care for their animals properly, this would eliminate more neglect and suffering than a million raids and protests.
– Animals will never be accorded broad rights or protections without the support and consent of vast numbers of human beings – as the New York Carriage Horse controversy demonstrates, the animal rights movement there is widely disliked and disregarded. People must not be alienated by an animal rights movement, it must be credible and moderate, they must be drawn to it and welcomed.
– People have the right to live among animals, animals have the right to live among people. Animals that have no connection with human beings, that cannot work with or for them, that have no meaning or function, are disappearing from the world at a horrific rate. It is simply not enough to say that animals should return to their natural environments when these environments are disappearing at a staggering and accelerating rate. Animals cannot survive and thrive in the world without people, we cannot be separated from them or despised by the people who advocate for them.
– We need a wiser and more mystical understanding of animals beyond rescuing them from human beings, beyond animals that are pets. This is far too narrow a prism to really protect them and integrate them into our world, as the WWW fund clearly demonstrates. The animal rights movement has not made animals safer or kept them alive, it is simply institutionalizing them, removing them from homes and cities and businesses and people and public institutions and events and segregating them in zoos, private preserves and the homes of the wealthy. When they disappear from our sight, they vanish also from our consciousness.
Animals have the right to be understood as they are – we need to grasp the real lives of real animals – they must not be exploited for the emotional benefit of muddled and needy human beings.
– Animals ought not ever exist for the purpose of promoting hatred and abuse upon human beings, or exploited for the purpose of battering people. The culture of the animal rights movement has become viscerally and intrinsically hostile to people – it has almost become it’s purpose, the movement has literally become synonymous with hatred, cruelty, ignorance and self-righteousness. That is a tragedy for animals, the very mention of animal rights has become polarizing.
The leader of one of the animal rights movements in New York seeking to ban the horses has repeatedly told reporters that the horses are lonely, suffering because they do not eat their meals together, and are sad because their heads are down when they stand in carriage lines. These sadly ignorant statements have never been challenged by the journalists who repeat them, they are false according to the testimony of every reputable or knowledgeable animal lover, horse lover, veterinarian or behaviorist. Animals have the right to have their fate and future determined by people and officials who know and understand them, their lives should not be sacrificed to human fantasy, rage, projection and emotionalizing.
– There is a mystical side to animals, we understand little about them, for all of our arrogance and anthropomorphizing. They are not like us, they are not our dependents, wards, equals. They are of another world and we need to understand them before claiming to decide their fate.
The idea of animal rights is complex. I want to write more about the urgent need for true animals rights in the coming weeks and months, but the World Wildlife Fund has reminded me that it is time for animals to be given real rights, before it is too lalte.