In the summer of 2016 agents of the Fish and Wildlife Department in Washington State were dispatched to hunt down and shoot 12 wolves, comprising an entire pack, because they were suspected of killing or injuring cattle being grazed on public land. Four of the animals, an adult female and three juveniles, managed to evade the bullets, and the killing operation has since been suspended.
Now, there is nothing particularly newsworthy or unusual about this. It’s a story as old as domestication itself: farmers and ranchers forced to protect crops and livestock from wild animals looking for an easy lunch. But there are several features of this incident that highlight the estranged relationship between civilized humans and the rest of the natural universe. Take the existence of wildlife agents, for example, the fact that there are bureaucratic divisions of government tasked with the responsibility to “manage” wildlife—and the fact that manage is not meant as euphemism here.
Wildlife has “managed” itself just fine for a billion years—but that was before civilization came on the scene. What managing wildlife really means is that the tools and purposes of corporate-industrial civilization need to be protected from inefficiencies caused by the natural world. Livestock production is less efficient when cattle have to be shared with local carnivores.
Where, exactly, does the authority to make life and death decisions about wildlife come from? This question does not have an easy answer because, from within a civilized framework, questions of the legitimacy of any given authority are answered through circular appeal to yet additional authorities. And questions about the ultimate source of authority itself—should anyone drill deep enough to ask—inevitably produce answers that are variations on “because that’s just the way it is.” Of course wildlife needs managed. All of Nature needs to be managed so that it comports with human needs and goals.
The specific needs and goals we are talking about in the wolf case here, however, are not at all human—but I’ll perhaps save that for a future post.
