Mutter und Kind

Leading up to Mother’s Day last weekend, two gut-wrenching stories were reported of babies abandoned to die. In Chicago, a forsaken baby was found atop a garbage can in an alley, and in Florida another was found in a plastic bag with household trash and coffee grinds in a dumpster. Both babies survived, thanks to the efforts of concerned citizens and fast-acting medical teams.

What anguish, desperation and mental illness were connected with these heinous acts committed by the women who birthed the babies can only be imagined, but these two tragedies show how much help some mothers may need. The African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” resonates with such tragic stories – not that individual responsibility is in anyway secondary, but that a whole community must contribute to a healthy and safe environment for offspring.

While the focus of Mother’s Day has been anthropocentric, in a time of staggering biodiversity loss due to us – human beings – we need to broaden our vision to acknowledge all nonhuman mothers, their role in the world and their right to survive and thrive. Since 1970, humankind has been responsible for the loss of 60 percent of wildlife – birds, fish, mammals and reptiles. So, it’s not just human moms who often need help.

The common belief is that wildlife fends for itself, that nature is wild and harsh. But it’s harsher today, because of the damage we continuously inflict on wild beings. Intercession is required. It’s a moral imperative that we right the wrongs we’ve inflicted and work to first stabilize the many threatened wildlife populations and then, for many species, help rebuild their numbers to sustainable levels.

As just one example of the harm we do to wild creatures, by virtue of 1 billion cars navigating the globe – individual steel units weighing thousands of pounds hurtling down the road at tremendous speed – we kill countless living beings day in and day out. This ongoing macro tragedy is illustrated on a micro level by a recent story from Cowfold, West Sussex, England, where Chris Rolfe stopped at the side of a road to check on a fox lying there. She was dead, but the farmer saw signs of life inside the fox. His quick thinking led to an emergency C-section which saved four pups. The foxes are being cared for by Rolfe’s mum in conjunction with a fox organization in preparation for a life in the wild – one human mother filling the void for the nonhuman life taken.

One hates to hazard a guess as to how many similar tragedies have befallen wildlife. We can do better – we must do better – for the wild ones trying to shepherd their young and for those separated from their mothers, and in remembrance of those who do not survive because of our carelessness. To reduce what’s commonly called “roadkill,” wildlife overpasses, underpasses and corridors are some examples of ways to lower loss of life. Further, if vehicle manufacturers are building “smart” cars now that will become ever-smarter and ultimately autonomous, shouldn’t they be smart enough to put the brakes on when a mountain lion leaps onto California’s highly trafficked 405 freeway or an armadillo attempts to cross the road in Kansas on I-35?

In this extinction-level crisis for wild animals created by Homo sapiens, innovation and technology need to be applied as vigorously to saving wild living creatures as they are applied to developing an app that creates more slave labor-level jobs that mean you and I can have the convenience of cheap food from McDonald’s delivered to our doorsteps. A paradigm shift must occur in how Man views all other species and what wildlife conservation in the 21st century means and how it is conducted. John A. Livingston (1923 - 2006), author and environmental studies professor, defined wildlife conservation as: “The preservation of wildlife forms and groups of forms in perpetuity, for their own sakes, irrespective of any connotation of present or future human use.” He nailed it.

This shift would be transformational not only in how we see other species in the world, but ourselves and all other life. It’s happening, albeit not fast enough. But our enhanced global connectivity and the dominance of social media are helping more people spread information about wildlife – the bad and the good, including the many lovely stories of animal moms that can be communicated so well through pictures, with, for example, an individual’s Pinterest page, Mutter und Kind, just one of so many examples that show how many commonalities there are across species, and, put more simply, the beauty of mother and child.

Our new shifting world will be one where other species have rights, where wildlife isn’t considered a commodity, where cruel trapping isn’t allowed and where poachers don’t exist. It will be a world where an animal “welfare” facility in Amarillo, Texas, would never euthanize a pregnant dog who had just been surrendered by her owner, with her last bit of life, while she lay dying, “spent trying to clean her newly birthed puppies.”

Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss. Contact her on FB @BetheChangeforAnimals and Twitter@TurboDog50.