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Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World

Book by Emma Marris · 5 quotes · Conservation, Invasive Species, Elephants

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Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World Quotes

“Why then, for so long, have humans just assumed -- or perhaps hoped -- that fish feel no pain and are essentially mindless? Balcombe thinks the problem is our inability to read their expressions or emotions. There's no sympathy trigger. 'We hear no screams and see no tears when their mouths are impaled and their bodies pulled from the water,' he writes. 'Their unblinking eyes -- constantly bathed in water and thus in no need of lids --amplify the illusion that they feel nothing.' Many do in fact vocalize when they are in pain, but the sound is designed to be heard under water, and we can't hear it.”

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“To make good environmental decision, we must stop focusing on trying to remove or undo human influence, on turning back time or freezing the non-human world in amber. We must instead acknowledge the extent to which we have influenced our current world and take some responsibility for its future trajectory…We should not seek to carefully control every plant and animal on the planet. We couldn’t even if we wanted to.”

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“When non-human animals are killed simply because they 'don't belong' and not because they are clearly causing some measurable harm, we have decided that erasing the taint of th ehuman is more important than the lives of animals (who, lest we forget, have no conception that they are in the 'wrong' place). This does not feel like humility in action. It is often the case that we hurt and kill animals because they are having effects we don't like, perhaps by predating on rare animals or eating rare plants. That's a trickier question--one we will tackle in due course.”

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“In addition, they say, not everyone in New Zealand is okay with strewing poison all over the land, or even support of the goals of the [invasive-species removal] project. 'The eradication of some introduced species is also contentious because some Maori regard them as culturally important,' they write. "the Pacific rat, for example, while targeted by Predator Free 2050, is protected on some Maori lands.”

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