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Sci Tech
Individual or species? Animal rights or animal welfare?
— Photo: AP
Kangaroo crisis: There are far more kangaroos in the island continent than people.
During a short visit to Australia last month, I witnessed a heated debate between the Defence Department officials and animal activists. The former wanted to cull the kangaroo colony that was growing at an alarming rate in their office campus at Canberra. The activists thought the very idea a sacrilege. The government’s predicament is only a small replica of what is happening in much of Australia.
Less food and fodder
Apparently there are far more kangaroos in the island continent than people. They forage and reproduce incessantly leading to an alarming drop in grassland. This has resulted in less food and fodder for the cattle and other livestock. And soil degradation is getting worse, eating up productivity.
The larger question being debated is whether the kangaroo population should be culled down to a manageable level, so that both the animals and the environment can be comfortable and sustainable.
Ten thousand miles west in South Africa is a similar problem. As kangaroos are dear to the Aussies, wildebeest and elephants are to the Proteans. The Krueger National Park there houses and takes good care of elephants.
A bit too good — since the elephant population there has grown into such a level that the shrubs and trees, which the pachyderms feed on, are not able to grow fast enough to keep up.
The carrying capacity has been exceeded; there are now 12,500 elephants there, while there should be no more than 7,500. (You get a feel of it when you find that an adult elephant weighing about 3,500 kg eats about 200 kg per day).
Such culling will keep the population of both the animals and the foliage at a sustainable level. But this proposal has infuriated animal activists there.
Monkey menace
Midway between these two countries stands New Delhi. Among the problems that the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) there faces is another longstanding one — the monkey menace.
As patients, visitors and doctors walk from building to building there, they face a number of wild monkeys threatening them, trying to grab what they carry, to look for food in them.
Institute authorities have been attempting many ways to solve the problem: cage them, shoot them, castrate them, hire monkey catchers from the Nilgiris.
Every solution has met with angry protests from ‘monkey lovers’. The institute is yet to eliminate the monkey menace.
Each of those instances illustrates an upset in the equilibrium of many species living in and sharing a common space — each trying to obtain the best advantage of the situation.
Sometimes, matters get so bad that a population could be decimated by the need and greed of another. It was humans colonizing Mauritius, a sylvan equatorial paradise in the 1700s, who made the native dodo bird extinct, from millions to none within a hundred years.
As more people in a region need and take up more space, they rob the endogenous native animals and plants of their habitat. Nowhere to go, the animals come into our villages and towns, looking for food and shelter.
Le Chatelier principle
The principle of Le Chatelier, well known in chemistry, operates in ecology and environment as well. As conditions change, the system adjusts itself to accommodate the change.
Increasing the pressure in the Haber-Bosch chamber containing nitrogen and hydrogen helps make more ammonia, since the reaction involves a reduction in volume. The Dodo, once the reigning species in Mauritius, grew to enormous numbers until man came in, to share (nay, conquer) its space. The Le Chatelier principle was in merciless operation and led to a species extinction.
In the grand stage of biology, such drama plays and replays itself time and again. It is this drama that Darwin described as natural selection, not always “Nature, red in tooth and claw”, but gentler.
Human-centric focus
It is when humans enter as part of the act, and start analyzing, using the lens of sentience or emotion that matters take on an immediate, human- centric focus. Often, we transfer such feelings to other species, the kangaroo, elephant or monkey.
Such anthropic analysis is at once both endearing and troubling. Endearing because of the way we show our care and affection towards other species, but troubling since it focuses on individual animals and not the species at large — a case of mistaking trees for the woods. Professor Michael Pollan of Berkeley in his outstanding recent book ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’ highlights this.
Natural habitat
He recounts the controversy that raged about the restoring the natural habitat and saving the island fox population at the Santa Cruz island off California, which points to how tangled the web can be between various species in an ecosystem.
Pigs, introduced there a century ago there, ate up all acorns, thus soon depleting the wild oak forestry. Their rooting also spoilt the soil causing the rampant growth of undesirable plants like fennel.
Explosion of pigs
The explosion of pigs there brought the golden eagle, which gobbles up all baby mammals such as piglets and baby island foxes. Of the two, baby foxes were easier caught and this led to the rapid depletion of the native island fox.
The National Park Services’ efforts to cull the pig population caused an outrage from animal activists who started a ‘Save the Pigs’ campaign. In all these examples, who is right, and whose side should we be on — that of the individual animal or the species? Mollen asks “The pig or Pig? Much depends on how you choose to answer that question …the animal rightist concerns himself only with individuals.
Liberal individualism
Exclusive concern with the individual might make sense in a culture of liberal individualism, but how much sense does it make in nature? Is the individual animal the proper focus of our moral concern, when we are trying to save an endangered species or restore a habitat?
Is the individual the crucial moral entity in nature, as we have decided it should be in human society? We simply may require a different sort of ethics to guide our dealings with the natural world, one as well suited to the particular needs of plants and animals and habitat (where sentience counts for little), as rights seem to suit us and serve our purposes today”.
Cut the number to a level that offers enough food and space to lead a sustainable level.
D. BALASUBRAMANIAN
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