Pets vs. Wildlife

After donating to groups like Best Friends for several years, I have decided to give instead to organizations that protect wild animals in wild habitat. I’m in the process of researching which organizations have the lowest overhead and the best results.

Saving house pets from being killed in shelters or churned out in soulless puppy mills is an excellent goal, but millions of people not only already give to organizations that rescue homeless cats and dogs, but personally participate in their rescue. Ownership of companion animals is growing by leaps and bounds. In 2017–2018, 68% of American homes (approximately 85 million families) had pets; in 1988, only 56% did. Sixty percent of homes in 2017–2018 had dogs and 47% had cats, for a total of 88 million dogs and 94 million cats. Obviously there are many “cats & dogs” households testing whether opposites (i.e., rival predators) attract.

Yet in 2017, one-third of homeowners’ liability claims were pet-related, amounting to $700 million, up 90% from 2003. Feral or “community” cats and packs of feral dogs are becoming more noticeable. People feed them; they reproduce; they encounter roaming house pets and transmit a host of ailments, some fatal. Feral dogs in particular signify the weakening of civil society. They don’t fear humans and wander without regard for natural territories. And house cats kill millions of wild creatures annually for the sheer feline fun of it.

So there is no shortage or imminent extinction bedevilling house pets either indoor or outdoor. The greater the demand, in fact, the greater the supply. The extinction of wildlife (amphibians, birds, bees, bats, tuna, cetaceans, foxes, wolves, bears, big cats, pangolins, rhinos, elephants, and on and on) is a real threat, however. No matter how many millions of well-meaning people open their doors (and hearts) to puppies and kittens, the growing scarcity of wilderness is not addressed. This crisis of habitat loss is driving the disappearance of rare, endangered and valuable species, which, once extinguished, can never return.

Honestly, the love we lavish on our pets makes us feel as if we’re doing something to Save the Animals. The toys and treats we shower them with make up for the newborn litter that starves because its mother can no longer find prey or is killed trying to return to the den.

Numerous cases where dozens of wild animals are captured or bred, then caged and kept barely alive for sale as pets, trophies or weird Chinese pharmaceuticals, do nothing to lessen species endangerment either. What National Geographic calls “wildlife tourism”

isn’t new, but social media is setting the industry ablaze, turning encounters with exotic animals into photo-driven bucket-list toppers. Activities once publicized mostly in guidebooks now are shared instantly with multitudes of people by selfie-taking backpackers, tour-bus travelers, and social media “influencers” through a tap on their phone screens. …

The demand for exotic animals that tourists can touch has led to animals being taken illegally from the wild. Some, such as Amazonian sloths, typically die after weeks or months in captivity.

With exploding millions of people demanding their share of the planet, insane scenes like the queues trudging along to “summit” Mt. Everest are becoming more and more common. If global warming is occurring, due to whatever causes, more and more “development” will destroy more irrecoverable wilderness.

The essential motive is well described by NatGeo reporter Lindsay Smith:

Killing wildlife without a permit is a criminal offense [in Zimbabwe]. But the leopard’s skin, teeth, claws and bones – worth hundreds of dollars on the black market – represent a month’s salary in Zimbabwe’s impoverished economy.

It’s pleasant and easy to “adopt” domesticated breeds. As an inexpensive baby surrogate, a kitten or puppy seems like a brilliant solution. But we can’t fool ourselves that this protects the animal kingdom from Man. Natural evolution is at a standstill – maybe even devolving. And domestication is as bad for our fluffy purebred pets as it is for genus Canis and genus Felis. Surveys show that a majority of American pets are overweight, obese and/or diabetic.

Perhaps most problematic is how these ersatz infants, dubbed “fur babies,” have become the surrogates of choice for many conscientious young people. Unfortunately the “parenting” of fur babies diverts from human parenthood the very people whose children would have cared enough to restore a better balance to Man vs. Nature. It is fair to say that animal surrogates are accomplishing the opposite of their intent. The more pets, the less diversity. The less evolution, the less nature.

Benjamin Disraeli said that “nations do not have friends, they have interests.” Animals are at our mercy. We don’t need to “befriend” them, or denature, trivialize or infantilize them: we need to find our common interests. Which are simply the freedom, the habitat and the territory to continue evolving, diversifying and otherwise pursuing each species’s unique destiny. Since animals are at our mercy, it is up to us to respect those destinies.

Cuteness can’t be the only criterion for a creature’s continued survival. But does this mean I’m giving my “own” two cats the boot? Hah – hardly. The older one will soon depart this world, whereupon the younger one will go into mourning – until I adopt a brand new kitten which he hopefully will cotton to. They will continue to be indoor cats, stalking crickets and making tremulous little trills in their throats as they birdwatch at the windows. Their role will continue to be to take the edge off my painful estrangement from the natural world – an estrangement that can never be mended, alas.

Meanwhile, there's an outfit call Pristine Seas that has successfully allied with South American governments to protect more than two million square miles of ocean over the last ten years. My check is in the mail.