Animal Cruelty & Dehumanization in Human Rights Violations by Wolf Clifton

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

 

 

Animal Cruelty & Dehumanization in Human Rights Violations by Wolf Clifton

 

 

Almost annually people who care about animals are shocked by

accounts of how the U.S. military prepares combat medics to work in

Iraq and Afghanistan.

Petty Officer Third Class Dustin E. Kirby, for example,

described his training to C.J. Chivers of The New York Times in

November 2006, almost a year after Kirby himself was severely

wounded on Christmas Day 2005.

" The idea is to work with live tissue, " Kirby explained.

" You get a pig and you keep it alive. Every time I did something to

help him, they would wound him again. So you see what shock does,

and what happens when more wounds are received by a wounded creature.

My pig? They shot him twice in the face with a 9-millimeter pistol,

and then six times with an AK-47, and then twice with a 12-gauge

shotgun. Then he was set on fire. I kept him alive for 15 hours. "

In July 2008 a similar exercise conducted at Schofield

Barracks, Hawaii, by the 25th U.S. Army Infantry Division attracted

protest from PETA.

" Shooting and maiming pigs is as outdated as Civil War

rifles, " alleged PETA spokesperson Kathy Guillermo.

Responded Major Derrick Cheng, " Alternative methods just

can't replicate what the troops are going to face. What we're doing

is unique to what the soldiers are going to actually experience. "

Nine members of Congress opposed yet another such exercise,

undertaken in August 2009 at Valley Center, California, by the U.S.

Marine Corps.

" This is kind of the shock-and-awe treatment, " responded

Corpsman Mark Litz to Tony Perry of the Los Angeles Times. " A lot of

these guys have never really seen blood and could freeze up the first

time they do, " Litz explained. " What good is a Marine or corpsman

who's frozen up in combat? "

What the pig training is really all about has very little to

do with practicing whatever medical techniques the participants use.

Before the trainees ever handle a pig, they will have practiced the

procedures many times with realistic manequins and computer programs.

The central purpose of the pig training is to prepare combat medics

to cope emotionally with the realities of warfare: to learn to

distance themselves from suffering, bloodshed, and death, even

when it happens to their buddies.

Schooling medical personnel would seem to have a higher and

more benign purpose than the bayonet drills that are still a routine

part of military training worldwide. Yet the underlying goal is

similar.

U.S. armed forces last mounted a battalion-sized bayonet

charge on February 2, 1951. U.S. military officers recognized as

early as the Civil War that modern firearms had made the bayonet

charge an obsolete tactic. U.S. Army and Marine Corps recruits

nonetheless still practice bayonet charges in basic training and boot

camp, because the exercise of repeatedly ramming a bayonet into a

mannequin, screaming " Spirit of the bayonet--kill! " , is believed to

be of enduring value in enabling troops to take human lives, despite

using much more sophisticated and distant methods. A soldier may sit

safely at a desk in California while guiding a Predator drone to

strike a suspected Taliban hideout in Pakistan, but killing even an

avowed enemy nonetheless tends to trouble most people--until they

have learned to suppress inhibition while following orders.

Killing animals in preparation for combat is no longer part

of the training of most U.S. soldiers, but exceptions have surfaced.

Pilots, for example, whose rockets and bombs tend to kill the most

people in modern warfare, may be taught to dispatch tame rabbits and

poultry with their bare hands, ostensibly as part of " survival

training " in case they are shot down over enemy territory. Reality

is that U.S. military pilots have not had occasion to use such

" survival training " in living off the land until rescue since World

War II. But the advent of rapid transmission of photographs of dead

and wounded civilians hit by misdirected airstrikes may have

exponentially increased the awareness of pilots of what their weapons

do.

Killing animals is occasionally exposed as a part of military

training abroad. Some Peruvian recruits were taught to bayonet dogs

as recently as 2000. This training was apparently introduced years

earlier to prepare troops for counter-insurgency work during a grisly

civil war, in which the enemy was almost indistinguishable from

themselves.

Within Western ideology, as distinct from the

Hindu/Buddhist tradition, animals have typically been regarded as

qualitatively different from humans. Standards for the treatment of

humans exist in all cultures, but moral consideration of animals is

usually a non-issue. Even where there are rules governing how

animals may be killed, as in slaughter and sacrifice, few

people--especially in the West--have ever questioned whether animals

may be killed.

Thus animals may be used to desensitize soldiers to killing.

More than that, excluding animals from ethical consideration may be a

first step toward a society rationalizing persecution of any people

it might relegate to " sub-human " status.

ANIMAL PEOPLE readers will be keenly aware of the

ever-expanding body of research demonstrating the association between

criminal animal abuse and violent crimes against humans. Among the

landmarks, a 1983 study by E. DeViney, J. Dickhert, and Randy

Lockwood found that in 88% of families where children are physically

abused, animal abuse is also present. A 1999 study by Arnold Arluke,

Jack Levin, Carter Luke, and Frank Ascione found that animal

abusers were 5.3 times more likely to have a violent criminal record

than non-abusers.

The association of violence against animals with violence

against humans is scarcely limited to illegal forms of violence.

ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1994-1995 discovered a positive correlation between

the numbers of licensed hunters and rates of family violence at the

county level in New York, Ohio, and Michigan.

None of these studies prove that animal abuse causes

human-to-human violence. Yet they do show the two to be inextricably

related and fundamentally similar in nature.

Cruelty to animals and human rights violations have mostly

been viewed as separate subjects. However, they may be seen as part

of a continuity if one considers the process of dehumanization, by

which a victim or enemy comes to be exempted from ethical

consideration.

Human rights violations may also be understood as the

collective practice of acts that are considered criminal when

inflicted on people other than the dehumanized class of victims.

Frequently human rights violations take the form of

societally condoned serial killing, by secret police " death squads, "

mobs, or private militias. To understand how this occurs, one

might examine dehumanization as practiced by criminally prosecuted

serial killers.

From the beginning of systematic study of serial killers,

criminologists have recognized that the overwhelming majority kill

and torture animals as well as people--sometimes as a prelude to

killing humans, sometimes between killing human victims. ANIMAL

PEOPLE pointed out in 2006 that there is a visible association

between the gender of human victims and the species of animal victims

targeted by serial killers. Specifically, while serial killers who

target women also tend to persecute cats, those who target males

(such as John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer) display a clear

preference for persecuting dogs. This suggests that in the minds of

the perpetrators there is an equation of the human victims with the

animal victims, and that this equation contributes to the ability

and motivation of the serial killer to kill.

Dehumanization occurs quite openly and ubiquitously in

comparisons of human enemies to animals. To call someone a dog is an

insult in many languages, and in societies with traditional taboos

against dogs the term is considered especially hateful. Thus Iraqi

journalist Muntader al-Zaidi on February 14, 2008 threw his shoes at

then-U.S. President George W. Bush while screaming in Arabic, " This

is your kick in the butt, you son of a bitch! " And thus Chinese

propagandists under the notoriously dog-hating dictator Mao tse Tung

made frequent reference to American allies as " capitalist running

dogs. "

Terms such as " pig " and " snake " are used similarly.

Theodore Roosevelt offered a more visceral example of

dehumanizing an enemy when he reportedly boasted that he had " killed

a Spaniard with my bare hands like a jackrabbit " during the

Spanish/American War.

As dehumanization progresses from insult to homicide to

genocide, the victims are not only compared to animals, or treated

in the same manner as animals, but are considered animals. The very

word " human " can come to have a highly selective and subjective

context. Slavery in the U.S., for example, was often rationalized

by maintaining that Africans constituted a separate species from

Europeans. Many quasi-scientific efforts were made to try to prove

this. The 19th century physician Samuel Morton is remembered for

ranking human races in terms of moral and intellectual endowment on

the basis of skull shape, with Caucasians predictably at the top of

the list. Other scientists of the time, such as Josiah Nott and

Louis Agassiz, proposed that blacks were not only an inferior race,

but had in fact evolved from different ancestors than Europeans.

Dehumanization progressed to perhaps the best-documented

extreme under the Third Reich. The Nazis literally categorized Jews,

gypsies, dark-skinned Africans, and other non-Aryans as

" untermenschen, " meaning sub-human, and took dehumanization to the

extent of experimentally attempting to hybridize some " untermenschen "

with great apes. Jews in particular were commonly described as

" vermin, " " parasites, " and " microbes. " Regarded not only as animals

but as parasites, Jews were killed by the millions with the

insecticide Zyclon B.

The Nazi concentration camps, gas chambers, assembly lines

for dismembering the dead in order to recycle their hair, fat, and

gold teeth, and crematories that reduced the remnants to bone ash

fertilizer were directly modeled on mechanized slaughterhouses,

introduced to Europe just as the Nazis came to power.

The World War II Japanese military performed comparable

atrocities, with similar pretexts. Chinese captives were used in

experiments including vivisection, deliberate infection with

disease, and exposure to all manner of extreme conditions. The

extent of dehumanization practiced by Japanese researchers in China

and Korea was so extreme that comparing the victims to animals gave

way to calling the subjects " maruta, " literally meaning " logs of

wood. "

Americans were also dehumanized in Japanese wartime

propaganda. " Let us kill these animals who have lost the human

spirit, " suggested one widely distributed cartoon.

Americans in turn dehumanized the Japanese. Merely " Japs "

early in the war, the Japanese became " zips " later. This was short

for " zipperheads, " but the word " zip " is also a slang synonym for

" zero. "

In post-war pretense Americans who spoke of killing " zips "

were said to have been referring to the top Japanese warplane, the

Mitsubishi Zero--but the context of " zips " tended to be " persons who

may be killed with moral impunity, " including with atomic bombs that

killed hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians.

Dehumanization requires sharply differentiating between

" humans " and " animals, " in order to remove the victims from moral

consideration. This was much more easily done when much less was

known--or recognized--about human and animal nature. Charles Darwin,

however, was troubled by moral constructs that place humanity at

the apex of creation with more than just the theory of evolution. As

well as demonstrating that humans are kin, though distant, with the

" lowest " of life forms, Darwin concluded that " the difference in

mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly

is one of degree and not kind. "

Science has increasingly revealed this to be true. Traits

once believed unique to humans, such as tool use, self-awareness,

expressions of empathy and mourning, and even the invention and use

of language are not only ubiquitous among humans, even the

dehumanized, but have also all now been identified in multiple other

animal species. Conversely, human infants, sociopaths, and those

with mental disabilities may lack some or all of these traits. Thus

definitions of " humanity " based on behavior are defining tendencies,

not absolutes.

Yet even a firm and inflexible definition of " humanity, " if

one could be found, would undercut only conscious dehumanization.

The propensity of animal abusers to also commit human rights

violations would remain unchanged: defining terms does not destroy

the basic nature of violence, or the inclination of violent people

to inflict mayhem on all vulnerable forms of life.

Eliminating the contributions of dehumanization to crimes

against humanity therefore requires that moral consideration not be

restricted solely to humans. Extending compassion to animals can

have only beneficial effects for society.

Mohandas Gandhi is often quoted as stating that, " The moral

progress of a nation may be judged by the way it treats its animals. "

Though Gandhian scholars have been unable to find any such explicit

statement in his writings, this was among his evident insights. If

animals may not be mistreated, cruelty to humans is also

categorically condemned, and dehumanization may no longer be used as

a pretext or rationalization for cruelty.

 

 

[Wolf Clifton is studying comparative religion and film

animation at Vanderbilt University.]

 

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,

founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the

decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations.

We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

for free sample, send address.]

[Guest guest]

The guest editorial by Wolf Clifton is a piece of superb writing.

 

My congratulations to the young scholar from Vanderbilt University.

 

S. Chinny Krishna

Chennai, India

 

 

> From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

>

>

> Animal Cruelty & Dehumanization in Human Rights Violations by Wolf

> Clifton

>

>

> Almost annually people who care about animals are shocked by

> accounts of how the U.S. military prepares combat medics to work in

> Iraq and Afghanistan.

> Petty Officer Third Class Dustin E. Kirby, for example,

> described his training to C.J. Chivers of The New York Times in

> November 2006, almost a year after Kirby himself was severely

> wounded on Christmas Day 2005.

> " The idea is to work with live tissue, " Kirby explained.

> " You get a pig and you keep it alive. Every time I did something to

> help him, they would wound him again. So you see what shock does,

> and what happens when more wounds are received by a wounded creature.

> My pig? They shot him twice in the face with a 9-millimeter pistol,

> and then six times with an AK-47, and then twice with a 12-gauge

> shotgun. Then he was set on fire. I kept him alive for 15 hours. "

> In July 2008 a similar exercise conducted at Schofield

> Barracks, Hawaii, by the 25th U.S. Army Infantry Division attracted

> protest from PETA.

> " Shooting and maiming pigs is as outdated as Civil War

> rifles, " alleged PETA spokesperson Kathy Guillermo.

> Responded Major Derrick Cheng, " Alternative methods just

> can't replicate what the troops are going to face. What we're doing

> is unique to what the soldiers are going to actually experience. "

> Nine members of Congress opposed yet another such exercise,

> undertaken in August 2009 at Valley Center, California, by the U.S.

> Marine Corps.

> " This is kind of the shock-and-awe treatment, " responded

> Corpsman Mark Litz to Tony Perry of the Los Angeles Times. " A lot of

> these guys have never really seen blood and could freeze up the first

> time they do, " Litz explained. " What good is a Marine or corpsman

> who's frozen up in combat? "

> What the pig training is really all about has very little to

> do with practicing whatever medical techniques the participants use.

> Before the trainees ever handle a pig, they will have practiced the

> procedures many times with realistic manequins and computer programs.

> The central purpose of the pig training is to prepare combat medics

> to cope emotionally with the realities of warfare: to learn to

> distance themselves from suffering, bloodshed, and death, even

> when it happens to their buddies.

> Schooling medical personnel would seem to have a higher and

> more benign purpose than the bayonet drills that are still a routine

> part of military training worldwide. Yet the underlying goal is

> similar.

> U.S. armed forces last mounted a battalion-sized bayonet

> charge on February 2, 1951. U.S. military officers recognized as

> early as the Civil War that modern firearms had made the bayonet

> charge an obsolete tactic. U.S. Army and Marine Corps recruits

> nonetheless still practice bayonet charges in basic training and boot

> camp, because the exercise of repeatedly ramming a bayonet into a

> mannequin, screaming " Spirit of the bayonet--kill! " , is believed to

> be of enduring value in enabling troops to take human lives, despite

> using much more sophisticated and distant methods. A soldier may sit

> safely at a desk in California while guiding a Predator drone to

> strike a suspected Taliban hideout in Pakistan, but killing even an

> avowed enemy nonetheless tends to trouble most people--until they

> have learned to suppress inhibition while following orders.

> Killing animals in preparation for combat is no longer part

> of the training of most U.S. soldiers, but exceptions have surfaced.

> Pilots, for example, whose rockets and bombs tend to kill the most

> people in modern warfare, may be taught to dispatch tame rabbits and

> poultry with their bare hands, ostensibly as part of " survival

> training " in case they are shot down over enemy territory. Reality

> is that U.S. military pilots have not had occasion to use such

> " survival training " in living off the land until rescue since World

> War II. But the advent of rapid transmission of photographs of dead

> and wounded civilians hit by misdirected airstrikes may have

> exponentially increased the awareness of pilots of what their weapons

> do.

> Killing animals is occasionally exposed as a part of military

> training abroad. Some Peruvian recruits were taught to bayonet dogs

> as recently as 2000. This training was apparently introduced years

> earlier to prepare troops for counter-insurgency work during a grisly

> civil war, in which the enemy was almost indistinguishable from

> themselves.

> Within Western ideology, as distinct from the

> Hindu/Buddhist tradition, animals have typically been regarded as

> qualitatively different from humans. Standards for the treatment of

> humans exist in all cultures, but moral consideration of animals is

> usually a non-issue. Even where there are rules governing how

> animals may be killed, as in slaughter and sacrifice, few

> people--especially in the West--have ever questioned whether animals

> may be killed.

> Thus animals may be used to desensitize soldiers to killing.

> More than that, excluding animals from ethical consideration may be a

> first step toward a society rationalizing persecution of any people

> it might relegate to " sub-human " status.

> ANIMAL PEOPLE readers will be keenly aware of the

> ever-expanding body of research demonstrating the association between

> criminal animal abuse and violent crimes against humans. Among the

> landmarks, a 1983 study by E. DeViney, J. Dickhert, and Randy

> Lockwood found that in 88% of families where children are physically

> abused, animal abuse is also present. A 1999 study by Arnold Arluke,

> Jack Levin, Carter Luke, and Frank Ascione found that animal

> abusers were 5.3 times more likely to have a violent criminal record

> than non-abusers.

> The association of violence against animals with violence

> against humans is scarcely limited to illegal forms of violence.

> ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1994-1995 discovered a positive correlation between

> the numbers of licensed hunters and rates of family violence at the

> county level in New York, Ohio, and Michigan.

> None of these studies prove that animal abuse causes

> human-to-human violence. Yet they do show the two to be inextricably

> related and fundamentally similar in nature.

> Cruelty to animals and human rights violations have mostly

> been viewed as separate subjects. However, they may be seen as part

> of a continuity if one considers the process of dehumanization, by

> which a victim or enemy comes to be exempted from ethical

> consideration.

> Human rights violations may also be understood as the

> collective practice of acts that are considered criminal when

> inflicted on people other than the dehumanized class of victims.

> Frequently human rights violations take the form of

> societally condoned serial killing, by secret police " death squads, "

> mobs, or private militias. To understand how this occurs, one

> might examine dehumanization as practiced by criminally prosecuted

> serial killers.

> From the beginning of systematic study of serial killers,

> criminologists have recognized that the overwhelming majority kill

> and torture animals as well as people--sometimes as a prelude to

> killing humans, sometimes between killing human victims. ANIMAL

> PEOPLE pointed out in 2006 that there is a visible association

> between the gender of human victims and the species of animal victims

> targeted by serial killers. Specifically, while serial killers who

> target women also tend to persecute cats, those who target males

> (such as John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer) display a clear

> preference for persecuting dogs. This suggests that in the minds of

> the perpetrators there is an equation of the human victims with the

> animal victims, and that this equation contributes to the ability

> and motivation of the serial killer to kill.

> Dehumanization occurs quite openly and ubiquitously in

> comparisons of human enemies

[Guest guest]

This is a very interesting article, especially the description used for

people of other races and members of other species.. Language used to

describe animals as inferior beings or inanimate objects is very widespread.

The attached article gives some more information :

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1028-hance_language.html

*Language and conservation: why words matter

Commentary by Jeremy

Hance<http://news.mongabay.com/news-index/jeremy_hance1.html>

mongabay.com

October 28, 2009

*

 

The words we choose matter. Benjamin Lee Whorf, an influential American

linguist theorized that the language one speaks directly impacts our

thoughts; he is quoted as saying, " language shapes the way we think, and

determines what we can think about " . If this is the case then those who

believe in conservation must select their words wisely.

 

My wife and I recently traveled to Africa where we visited wildlife parks in

both Zimbabwe and Botswana. The animals we encountered and the scenes we

were fortunate enough to witness proved so beautiful and wondrous that I

have a difficult time describing them—at least in any way that accurately

depicts the experience.

 

Although our trip was amazing, an aspect of it troubled me as we left. The

first instance was at Chobe National Park in Botswana when our guide

referred to the impalas we were watching as 'Africa's McDonalds'. The reason

for this, he explained—after he didn't get the requisite chuckles he may

have expected—was because impalas have black marks on their rump, outlined

by white, and when their tail is positioned just so the marks appear to make

an 'M'. It's not a great likeness of the ubiquitous McDonalds logo, but

somehow the antelope attained the nickname—also apparently because they are

'fast food' for lions—and now can't shake it off.

 

I was a little troubled that the guide didn't take that moment to tell us

something about the impala's natural history: such as its ability to jump

nine meters (thirty feet), or the fact that it is active both during the day

and the night, or that its social structure is flexible enough to change

group structures depending on food availability.

 

It was a small thing, all in all, so I didn't think about it again until we

visited a private wildlife park in Zimbabwe, and our guide told us the same

thing. Only this guide took it one step further: every time we would see an

impala he would boisterously call out 'McDonaaaaalds!' instead of referring

to it by its common name, impala, or, I even wondered, why not its

scientific name *Aepyceros melampus*?

 

 

As our trek wore on, I realized this had become a trend. Zebras instead of

being zebras were 'donkeys in pajamas!' while, worse of all, was the name

give to the waterbuck. This antelope has a white circular mark on its

hindquarters, and so the guide called it, 'toilet-seat buck!'—his voice

ringing out over the savannah.

 

Now, this got me thinking. If what we choose to name something matters, if

it in a way shapes our perception and thoughts, then what did it mean to

tourists that these animals, which they may only see in the wild once in

their life, were referred to as 'McDonalds', 'donkeys in pjs', or

'toilet-seat buck'?

 

Seeing animals in the wild, watching the way they move about their natural

environment should be an experience of awe and profound respect. It should

be a moment to remember. But if one's guide is calling the animal's

nicknames that are silly and even demeaning, how can one really see these

animals for what they are?

 

Both the reserve in Zimbabwe and the park in Botswana exist, at least in

part, for the conservation of species, yet how could conservation be a

success if we demean the species we asking people to help conserve?

 

This train of thought led me to other phrases common in African lingo. In

Africa, parks and reserves are called 'game parks'. This is leftover

language from the time when the majority of these places were literally for

the purpose of 'game', i.e. shooting animals with rifles. While there are

still true 'game parks' in Africa (where someone can pay to shoot pretty

much any species) the majority of reserves are places for the conservation

of wildlife. Why not then call these parks what they are: 'wildlife parks'

instead of 'game parks'?

 

 

Just think about the difference in these two names: small but important.

When I think of game I think of animals that survive and are managed simply

to be shot for human pleasure, 'trophy' hunting as it were. When I think of

'wildlife' I think of many species interacting, of ecosystems. While calling

it 'game parks' may be a cute echo of the past, is it worth retaining the

phrase given the image it presents—whether conscious or subconscious?

 

Along the same vein is the propensity for Africans—and tourists—to refer to

the 'Big Five'. Like 'game parks' this is an archaic reference to when

people visited the bush to hunt animals instead of view them. The Big Five

literally refers to the five most difficult animals to kill: the elephant,

lion, African buffalo, leopard, and rhino. However, despite the context

surrounding this phrase, it has come also to mean the five animals that

tourists most want to see. Not because these are necessarily the species an

individual tourist most hopes to see (birders, for example, will be

disappointed by the Big Five), but because it's what tourists are told—over

and over and over again—that they should want to see. Unfortunately this

establishes pressure on the guides to continuously look for the 'Big Five'.

But why the Big Five? Why should African parks and guides be chained to a

list that only made sense when people walked out into the bush with a

firearm? Why not the Big Ten, like elephant, lion, African buffalo, leopard,

rhino, giraffe, hippo, hyena, Nile crocodile, and cheetah? Or better yet why

not ditch the list altogether and just enjoy the wildlife that happens by

you, big or small, the object of past hunters or not.

 

Once our guide in Zimbabwe realized that my wife and I were engrossed and

interested in the animals' ecology—and not their nicknames—he actually

dropped his veneer and began to explain passionately about the animals we

were seeing. I thought then that perhaps calling the animals by nicknames

was meant to keep tourists 'entertained'.

 

But isn’t this emphasis on entertainment dangerous in itself? Animals were

not put on Earth to entertain us. If we view the value of biodiversity and

nature as merely for our entertainment then we will only care about

conserving species and environments we find especially 'likeable'. We,

however, know that natural ecosystems are worth far more than entertainment.

Along with providing essential services for our own survival, they also have

deep spiritual, cultural, and psychological worth. Not to mention the moral

beliefs underlying all conservation efforts.

 

A trip to Africa to see its wildlife should be an experience that goes well

beyond entertainment: it should be educational, enlightening, moving,

spiritual, and ultimately transformative. When a guide refers to species by

silly nicknames one can't help but feel that the guide places little value

in their own wildlife, though I suspect this is likely not the case, but

instead they feel pressured by a world that values entertainment more than

reality. Instead, I hope guides will share both their knowledge and love of

their nation's wildland, instilling respect for the creatures tourists are

viewing and imparting upon the visitors the importance of conservation

efforts for the survival of many of Earth's inhabitants.

 

 

In the end, few people would devote time, energy, and funds to save 'the

toilet-seat buck' or the 'McDonalds antelope', but it is worth everything to

know that in our world a group of impala graze on the dewy foliage; or a

male waterbuck with its tall strong horns shelters itself in the trees; or

that a zebra's distinct stripes can still flash against an African sunrise.

 

Words matter, let's put them to better use.