A Voice from the Wild

By “Awake!” correspondent in Canada

HELLO! Let me introduce myself. My name is Ursus Horribilis; I am a grizzly bear and I head a delegation of grizzlies. The reason we would like your attention is that there appears to be a great lack of communication between us furry quadrupeds and you humans. The feeling among us bears is that our public relations can be greatly improved by a friendly confrontation. May we come in? . . . Thank you.

At the outset, let us explain that although you humans have always given us the hare-and-hounds treatment, we have little ill feeling toward you. We would like to be friends if you will let us. The misunderstanding between us is not of our making, and we feel it is about time that you stopped the gun smoke and settled down to a more responsive behavior.

Let us tell you the story from the ground level. It will help you to see that we have a legitimate cause. First of all, this is not just a matter involving us Canadian grizzlies. Our protest embodies the grievances and pent-up feelings of the entire animal world, and it is presented in the hope that it will help you humans to turn over a new leaf and give us animals a better deal.

In doing so we acknowledge that you have exercised certain delegated rights in using us as a source of food, shelter and clothing. It is not to this that we object. But do you have to be so wanton in your slaughter? Ever since the time of Nimrod, the great bloodspiller, there have been those among you who seem determined to wipe out every last one of us.

History

Before the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century when weapons were handmade, the balance between us and you people was fairly equal, for we could generally outrun or outsmart you. However, with the advent of the machine we faced the beginning of the end, and the steady decimation of our numbers began.

Since that time it has been reported that hundreds of kinds of birds and animals have been irretrievably cut down or entirely destroyed. Is it your purpose to continue such practice? Do you really want to annihilate us? Please think about it.

Up to about a hundred years ago millions of buffalo roamed the vast North American plains. These animals were an abundant source of food and supplies to the natives. However, they were soon systematically slaughtered by professional hunters who killed them for sport, taking their heads as trophies and leaving the carcasses to rot on the field. If it had not been for the intervention of a few conservation-minded individuals, the American buffalo would be extinct today.

As with the buffalo, so it has been with other forms of wildlife. As humans crossed the continents, various kinds of animals were driven before them. Some animals were able to adjust to the changes, but others were driven into extinction or backed into the hinterlands and away from their natural habitat.

The Encroachment

As the swamps were drained and marshlands cleared, more and more acres came under the plow until the land teemed with people, and wildlife had to move. The sandhill cranes, the prairie chickens, the Canada geese, along with the limitless flocks of wild ducks that at one time darkened the sky for numbers, were driven north, ever north, toward the permafrost and the tundra.

For hundreds of years America’s original inhabitants, the native Indians, dwelt with the animals surrounding them. They killed for food and left some for the future. However, white men hunted indiscriminately, not merely for their needs, but to fill the endless demands of world markets for profit.

Prince Philip, in his book Wildlife Crises, wrote: “Sea-fishing is a typical example of the free-for-all exploitation of wild populations. The same applies to taking wild crocodiles or leopards for their skins. This is nothing less than a primitive scramble to cash in while the going is good in the boneheaded belief that there is an inexhaustible supply.” But there is a bottom to the barrel, and your scientists and wise men should take notice of this before irreparable damage has been done.

Think of what you have already done! The steel traps used on us grizzlies had double springs and were up to six feet in length. Some weighed as much as eighty pounds, and had bone-crushing jaws with jagged clincher teeth. Today hunters use airplanes and helicopters to track us down without mercy. By driving us to the wall, how do you expect any of us to survive?

It has been charged that we are ferocious beasts and dangerous killers. But the evidence is that such behavior usually results from severe provocation and the fear of what man will do, based on the background of bitter experience. Not too many of our kind deliberately seek out a confrontation with man, and, if given the choice, we invariably seek safety in flight. Do you blame us?

Read the appalling record of our treatment as told by your own historian in The World of the Grizzly Bear:

“In the old (American) West, wild animals were exploited. They had many enemies and few friends. Ignorance and illiteracy prevailed so that even the Catholic churches failed to recognize the rights of animals. Cruelty was not only condoned, it was encouraged. Animal fights were staged (between tethered grizzly bears and bulls) on holy days and on Sundays, at Spanish missions as well as elsewhere. And priests and churchmen joined the throng in order to enjoy bloody spectacles of death as the Romans who had cheered the massacre of early Christians.”

The same writer continues:

“Practically all of the so-called outlaws had been mutilated by man. Bloody Paws, a Wyoming grizzly, when killed carried three old bullet wounds. Old Mose of Colorado had escaped from a steel trap but left two toes between the iron jaws. Three Toes had lost two toes in a trap. Red Robber was a Utah bear: When skinned, the hunters found two old bullet wounds, an arrowhead imbedded in his back, and many scars on his head, neck, chest, and sides. The Bandit, an Oregon grizzly killed in Idaho, had a recent bullet wound high on the hump of his left shoulder. A grizzly killed in Idaho had a recent bullet wound high on his rump and another in the fleshy part of his back.”

One hunter reported having seen a mother grizzly and her two cubs. He shot the mother, whereupon she charged him. In the fight that followed, he cut her belly open with his hunting knife and when she had lost so much blood that she could no longer stand up she crawled back to her cubs and tenderly fondled them in a last attempt to console them until she was dead. The hunter confessed: “I was sorry that I had shot so affectionate a mother.”

Disruption and Imprisonment

Your giant dams span our rivers, your behemoth, earth-moving bulldozers are changing the natural terrain, disrupting our dens and hiding places. Your polluting oil spills and pesticides wreck our feeding grounds and cut off our source of livelihood. And the wastes from your cities, mines, mills and smelters poison our streams, making life unbearable. You leave us no chance!

How thoughtless and ruthless you have been! You have taken our pelts to dress your lovely ladies, and our heads you have mounted as trophies in your billiard halls and drawing rooms. How careful were you when you slaughtered millions of defenseless mother seals with their newborn babies on the frozen ice floes in the sea? And what about the great auk, that flightless bird, whom your hunters killed to the last remaining member just for its prized feathers? We grizzlies believe that you could have been more humane.

Furthermore, do you know how it feels to be left to freeze in a trap, with broken bones, while waiting in agonizing terror, for perhaps days, before being dispatched by the blow of your captor? We speechless animals have few advocates to plead our cause and there are no medical facilities for our wounded who must crawl away to die in silent misery. We acknowledge your prerogative to hunt us, but please, be more considerate​—or use a camera!

And do you show empathy when you imprison us in your zoos in restricting cages to be gawked at? How do you think we feel? Would you like to change places with us?

What of the Future?

There are no convictions among animals about constitutional rights or wrongs; we do not understand such matters. However, humans claim for themselves a higher intelligence, and you claim to be the custodians of just laws. Therefore, it must be that you have been endowed with understanding and responsibilities far beyond our intellect. If so, we wish you would exercise them.

Of course, in fairness, we agree that not all of you are guilty. Some of you have been very kind, and for that we are thankful. But in the main, we grizzlies feel that ours is not the only record that is grisly! It could all have been so different.

We bring this matter to your attention because, if there is no change, your present course could well lead to the total destruction of all life and to the ruination of the earth. It is that serious, and we are greatly concerned. We love the earth as our home, and if you humans will quit being so greedy we will be happy to share it with you. So how about moving over and giving us more room?

Some progressive steps have already been taken at conservation, but the results are still insufficient. There are large areas around the world with terrain that is unsuitable for industry or cultivation. Such territories could be turned into vast sanctuaries where animals might live in freedom and where you could maintain a balanced control of our numbers and where we, in turn, could be visited by you in our own environment. Do you get the picture?

So, come on, folks. Let’s shake a paw and be friends.