Today is the last day to hunt black bears near Missoula, Montana. But it’s not just black bears who have been “harvested.” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are investigating the death of a male grizzly who was killed in the Johnson Creek drainage by a hunter on May 16th, north of Bonner. Grizzly bears, unlike black bears, are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Violating the ESA is a federal crime.

The mistake, so easily avoidable, reminds us of how many times Gray wolves, also protected under the Endangered Species Act, have been illegally poached or allegedly accidentally killed by coyote hunters. A loophole in the interpretation of the ESA, called the McKittrick Policy, makes it difficult for prosecutors to do their job (because they have to prove intent in the mind of the hunter). But we must legally prosecute those who kill federally protected animals or the federal protections have no meaning.

Wolves are vulnerable to the “Shoot, Shovel and Shut Up” actions of hunters and ranchers who don’t feel like abiding by environmental protection laws. Grizzlies are harder to hide. Yet these magnificent bears are found in some of the wildest lands in the lower 48 — without many people to come looking for them. In this instance, the hunter who shot the grizzly reported his mistake, as he is obligated by law to do.

But when it comes to violating the ESA, the intention of the hunter should be irrelevant. If you pick up a gun with the intention of killing an animal, and there are similar-looking endangered animals in that territory, you better be damned sure who you’re shooting. Our laws have to have real teeth.

Although black bears and grizzlies (who are also called brown bears) can vary in color, the size difference — in bulk, teeth, claws, head and neck— don’t really compare. But the enormous hump in the shoulders of grizzly bears and the different profiles of their faces is perhaps most notable.

But even if it wasn’t — even if a trained bear hunter was as easily confused by the species as the average person might be — that only proves the point: We should not allow the hunting of a similar-looking species in the territory of endangered species. There is no rhyme or reason why anyone needs to hunt black bears or coyotes anymore than anyone needs to hunt wolves or grizzlies. If we want to protect grizzlies and wolves, we must protect coyotes and black bears. And that’s exactly why some want to remove ESA protections from Grizzlies and wolves, instead of protecting all four keystone predators and the ecosystems that benefit from their presence.

According to a report in Helena’s Independent Record, a local resident observed that “this spring bear hunt is crazy anyway. Lots of hunters can’t tell the difference between bears. This could be female with cubs, in which case they just killed two, three or four bears.”

And here’s the kicker: that bear was one of two endangered bears killed in Montana within a two week period. Two weeks later, a four year old bearwas found shot, killed, and hidden — dumped over a bridge into the Stillwater River. (State and federal officials are offering a reward for information about this case at 1–800-TIP-MONT).

But beyond the failure of the law to protect (and of hunters to distinguish between species) these endangered bears, a powerful lobby is working hard to delist — that is, to remove Endangered Species Act protections from Grizzlies.

In the West, in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, politicians secure their privilege by openly attacking legal protections for endangered animals like bears and wolves — using these animals to jump up their career ladders and pad their pockets. A majority want these animals protected. But a powerful minority doesn’t and the politicians cater to those wallet-feeders. They do so in denial of science: Grizzlies have only about 2% of their native range and do not meet the population standards of a “recovered species.”

Writer Christopher Ketcham notes in National Geographic that it is the Endangered Species Act (even with its flaws) that has kept grizzly bears and 200 other species from the brink of extinction. Despite catastrophic and mind-blowing, senseless political maneuvers — like the lifting of the ban on point-blank shooting wolves and hibernating bears in their dens in Alaska(can you imagine anything more cowardly?) even on wildlife refuges.

We must keep Endangered Species Act protections — and make them work. Congressional Conservatives are gearing up for a full-scale war on legal protections for wildlife and for wild lands. We must be ready and speak out on the importance of protecting grizzlies and other endangered species.

This week we thought it was sure death for P-45, a four year old male mountain lion who many conservationists see as a Hail-Mary pass for the threatened ecosystems and limited gene pool of lions in the Santa Monica mountains — who face possible extinction in the near future. So why is this virile and valuable young mountain lion a hero for some and a demon put on death row by others?

It really comes down to values. Not right or wrong, not good or bad, not evil or loving, and neither side is simple. But it is about values. Conservationists welcome the much-needed biodiversity brought by P-45 to a vulnerable wild population. Some ranchers recoil from the realities that living amidst mountains and mountain lions brings.

In the past year, P-45 is suspected to have killed ranched animals — from llamas to alpacas to a goat to a mini-horse. And that is why California Fish & Wildlife issued a depredation permit to rancher Victoria Vaughn-Perling, who had 10 days to kill the lion within 10 miles of the livestock kills (her 10 alpacas). Yet after massive national uproar, she has claimed she will not kill the lion.

Ms. Vaughn-Perling and other neighboring ranchers portray themselves as living in fear, for themselves and for their animals; as if under siege from the wild around them. Earlier this week, Vaughn-Perling said she would prefer to capture and relocate the lion, but would kill him if not allowed to relocate him. Thankfully, wildlife officials stepped in to negotiate with her – a move that wouldn’t happen in other locations, believe me.

Of course, his removal from this ecosystem would be just as problematic and reveals the fundamental system of values. There are only two other breeding-age males in the 10-15 lions living in the Santa Monica mountains, and P-45 is an important part of that ecosystem. Many do not understand or value the need for wild ecosystems, and see them as merely a nuisance that gets in the way of a civilized life. But we cannot have civilization without thriving wild habitats.

The National Park Service, who radio-collared and observed P-45 to study mountain lion behavior — science, learning, and those pesky values again — have stated that the behavior of P-45 is natural, and killing him does not solve the “problem.” Here is a major crux of the wildlife-livestock “conflict,” which is really a wildlife-rancher conflict:

“In a typical natural setting, animals flee from a mountain lion attack, but if animals are stuck in an unsecured pen, a mountain lion’s response can be to prey upon all available animals.” — National Park Service spokesperson Kate Kuykendall.

Once again, it comes down to values: choosing the value of coexisting or the value of dominance. We might sympathize with ranchers, as personified by Vaughn-Perling and her neighbors – just trying to make a living and get by, and really just wanting these wild lions away from them. They aren’t necessarily, that we know of, the foaming at the mouth wolf-haters or coyote-killers, who participate in bloodbaths and just like killing. Rather, they are okay with these animals being somewhere, just not anywhere near them.

Several problems immediately come to mind, however:

• There is increasingly less wild for these animals to go, because semi-rural, urban, and suburban sprawl into the foothills – where mountain lions live – is pushing lions to the brink and leaving little options.
• Not only have humans built ranches and subdivisions in the natural and dwindling territories of wild animals like lions and coyotes and wolves – but some of them refuse to take proper precautions that would allow coexistence.
• Animals are not disposable and we are not God. Ecosystems are intricate fabrics weaved by the relationships of their members. We must learn that keystone species, predators, are fundamental to trophic cascade – to the health of the entire rest of the inner workings of ecosystems. Without them, the thread comes loose.

For example, it may stun you to know that the National Wildlife Federation has offered to buy guard dogs for some of these ranchers, instead of killing vital mountain lions. Wouldn’t it be fair to assume that if one moves into wild territory, and forces livestock into these areas, one might have a moral responsibility, for oneself, for livestock, for wild neighbors, to make suitable protective arrangements for all involved?

Well that is just what some of the ranchers in this area have done. Vaughn-Perling, allegedly had barbed-wire fencing around her alpacas and security cameras. But anyone who lives amidst wildlife knows that is a gesture, but not the proper precaution. This  might deter a hiker or passerby, but does nothing in the way of deterrence that shows any understanding of mountain lions.

As I have mentioned before, proper fencing (depending on the type of predator), riders, guard dogs, fladry, lights, and sounds, among other nonlethal tactics (like hosting workshops for the ranching community on these methods) are successful and minimizing wildlife-human-livestock conflicts. Yet our legal system remains with the Wild West, where we colonize nature and natives, rather than even attempt to coexist — when a predator like a mountain lion is seen as a threat to a rancher who hasn’t even made minimal efforts to avoid the situation, they can easily apply for a permit to kill the lion (killing a lion without a permit can land you in jail and/or slapped with a $10,000 fine). With a coyote? They don’t even need a permit.

Honorably, the owner of the mini-horse that was attacked, and the owners of the winery where the llamas were attacked, did not seek a depredation permit, unlike Vaughn-Perling and others. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, ranch manager Dakota Semler said “The lions were here first, and we plan to stay… We realize the risks involved, but we also appreciate that lions are wild animals that also live here. So we’re going to learn to live and work with them around.” These ranchers were certainly as horrified by anyone else upon finding their ranched animals attacked and killed. But their response was not to seek a killing permit, but to erect lion-proof fencing.

Let us not surrender to the assumption that most people (including ranchers) want mountain lions gone either. When I lived in the Bay Area, a mountain lion mother and her three cubs were caught on a webcam sipping water in a creek on a relatively popular hiking trail. Overwhelmingly, people were delighted and awed, and, while slightly more cautious, simply excited. Similarly, in the wilderness where I live in Northern California, a mountain lion was shot and killed after it was seen in a neighborhood. The majority of people I ask about the incident refuse to speak about it, because they are deeply angered and saddened by the unnecessary killing of this magnificent, shy, mysterious animal.

So why this range of views? Most of us don’t really want to live in a world without lions, without wildlife, and without places for wildlife to thrive – places untrammeled by humans, spaces that are free from human domination.

Values and psychological motivations should be considered more in this moral dilemma. For when a rancher encounters the violence of their livestock slaughtered, one wonders who to blame. Some people come to the view that they had a role in this situation and do what they can to prevent it from recurring, and adjust to it, like Dakota Semler. Others, not wanting to blame themselves, blame the wild animal and create a culture of fear. But mountain lions, coyotes, wolves, foxes and bears are not a mafia – they are not sitting around a card table planning their attacks and revenge while puffing on Cuban cigars. It’s not personal, it’s business. Wildlife are presented with confined, unprotected livestock, that they are trained to otherwise hunt, and they simply go out to eat. Our values must be to coexist with our neighbors, knowing their lifestyle patterns.

The fur-farmer, Vaughn-Perling, perhaps under public pressure, but also with a great deal of coaxing from California Fish & Wildlife, has agreed to take the protective measures she should have in the first place, rather than kill this valuable lion. This should be the foundation of anyone who is already profiting from using animals and their bodies. But there is a fundamental stumbling block in the value system that at its core sees animals, whether livestock or wildlife, as disposable and quite secondary to human profit margins.

Mountain lions are assailed by human contact in a variety of forms, and not just from depredation killing, but from vehicle accidents and from ingesting rat poison. 13 of 14 mountain lions in this region, studied by the National Park Service, tested positive for ingested rat poison. Another major factor threatening these animals is habitat loss.

So a useful question to ask – and for you to consider – is, if most people want mountain lions and other wild predators to survive, if the wildlife officials want them to thrive, if some ranchers are willing to take precautionary measures, if some ranchers refuse to seek depredation permits, if organizations are willing to pay to provide the minimal protections the ranchers refuse to provide for themselves, and if mountain lions are so beloved that the life of an individual lion, like P-45, is the locus of media attention, of petitions aimed at saving his life, of public uproar… why is it that the ranchers who were irresponsible in the first place are the ones we listen to?

Why is it that the livestock industry has such a dominating reign over the law? Why does the livestock industry interests, particularly the ones who can’t coexist, trump the values of everyone else and our right to wildlife and wilderness? Why does these negligent industry operators get the power to impact which inmates are placed on death row?

More:

• Support Save L.A. Cougars and their fundraising to build a wildlife crossing over the 101.
• Support the Mountain Lion Foundation.
• Contact California Fish & Wildlife and Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and thank them and encourage them to continue supporting nonlethal measures and working with local ranchers to coexist with wildlife.
• Read this.
• Sign the petition to protect P-45.

When we coexist with wolves, we create an empathic relation in which the other’s needs are valued as our own. We see that through trophic cascade, wolves make healthy ecosystems and cleaner rivers and purer air for our children.

When we tolerate wolves, on the other hand, we see our needs uncomfortably subjugated to a perceived special interest. We see wolves benefitting from our tolerance at a cost to ourselves, when we create forced and false tolerance, rather than coexistence.

As children, our prize possession is that which is “mine.” As adults, property becomes like lines in the sandbox. The idea is that we all “get along” as long as we play nicely and leave each other’s stuff alone. But does tolerance create good neighbors, or strangers?

In the poem “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost’s narrator recounts his neighbor’s mantra: “good fences make good neighbors.” Mending the wall that separates their properties, one of pine and one of apples, the narrator wonders what he is “walling in and walling out.” Certainly fences can be necessary, keeping cattle out of wilderness, and wildlife out of cattle pens. The irony, Frost’s poem shows, is that fences don’t always make good neighbors and “something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”

Tolerance is a display made by the powerful. “I allow you to be different,” tolerance says. “I have decided to tolerate you.” Meanwhile, oppressed people cannot tolerate, because they can’t choose not to (without violent revolt and uprising). But tolerance is also an indicator of fear, of pretending not to see difference–racial blindness for example–of seeing others as threats in ways that alters our encounters with the others, or in deep inarticulable guilt and embarrassment over differences, particularly economic inequality.

The sun does not tolerate the weed – the weed adapts to the sun. To imagine nature needs our tolerance is to undermine the more serious need for coexistence, compassion and empathy. So what are our ideas about tolerance and difference doing to our sense of self, our relationship with others, our political relations with other nations? And is the difference between tolerance and coexistence really that important?

The difference comes down to power. If I coexist with nature, I understand I am part of it and it is part of me. I leave a light footprint on the planet. If I tolerate nature, on the other hand, I believe nature is to be dominated. I divert waterways, see forests as economic resources, and wilderness as track for road and sport. I see predators as a nuisance. I frack, I plunder, I mine, I pump, I leave a heavy-footed print upon the Earth. I am blind to ecosystems, or our essential interconnection, even if I appreciate nature’s beauty.

We take for granted that tolerance is the best way of being in the world. But emphasizing tolerance stunts the very diversity it purports to protect. Tolerance damages our ability to empathize and grow, and to see our interconnections. And it is that — our fear of change, our fear of growing — that is at the heart of hatred, prejudice, cruelty and real intolerance.

Removing boundaries means coming face to face with change — changing oneself, one’s culture, one’s systems of normalcy. One either encounters difference and meets it from above, saying “I will or will not tolerate you,” or one meets it from below, saying “I hope you tolerate me,” or one meets difference head on, saying “let’s coexist.” Coexisting, by thriving in a universe of radical difference is a virtue and it helps us feel our connections.

When you feel another’s pain, you feel your own pain more. Jeff Mogil’s study, referenced in the TED radio episode “Press Play,” shows being around strangers creates stress. Stress makes it hard to feel empathy. And not feeling empathy is why tolerance is an inadequate marker of social harmony. In his study, Mogil’s subjects plunged their arms into buckets of ice water and rated their pain. When they did so with a stranger, and were asked to rate their perception of the stranger’s pain, the rating was low. Repeating the same test with a friend, their perception of a friend’s pain was higher, as was their own pain. This is empathy. And it makes us wonder — do fences create good neighbors, or strangers?

A funny thing happens with empathy — when you see others as friends and neighbors, rather than as strangers — you stop wanting to kill them. You stop seeing them as immigrants, refugees, or nuisance. Harmony in a civil society cannot come without empathy and tolerance may actually get in the way.

When we tolerate others, we see ourselves as allowing the other to have the privilege of being tolerated by us. I will tolerate you IF you behave to my liking, if you stay off my lawn and out of my schools, if you don’t get too big for your britches, if you stay out of the West Bank and have no real political autonomy or independence, if you don’t make me budge, change, grow, or engage with empathy. As long as the wild doesn’t in any way impact my life. This is not really what we want from tolerance. It does not allow us to coexist.

When we coexist we see our Earth as shared, not something we can take or give. When we coexist  we are humbled by the recognition of the vastness of this mysterious universe.

The killing of Cecil the lion has outraged the public and not simply because he suffered needlessly for days. Why has he reached our hearts when so many other animals are hunted & poached? Why is everyone – from animal advocates to hunters to talk show hosts to the New York Times and the Guardian – so horrified by this brutal killing? The answer lies in freedom.

Cecil’s right to life and his right to be undisturbed were violated. But we too were tricked, harmed, desecrated. Cecil, a 13-year old lion, lived safe in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe under legal protection. But he was unfairly lured out of his refuge, tricked by poachers who tied a dead animal carcass to the back of a truck. Cecil, father to many cubs (who will likely now die), was an easy target while eating. Minnesota dentist and trophy-hunter Walter James Palmer then shot Cecil with an arrow. But Cecil suffered for 40 hours before he was tracked down, killed with a rifle, beheaded, and skinned. His body was left to rot in the sun. His head is missing, as is the now notorious trophy-killer.

Our right to freedom,  to a place in the world where legally protected wilderness and wildlife remain safe, was also violated. There is a distinct lack of democratic consent in the violation of anti-poaching laws, and it is not just Cecil’s lack of consent, but ours too. We are disgraced by transgression of moral law, by the loss of sanctuary, and by the bloodlust of leaving a privileged human community with the sole purpose of entering a wild community around the world to needlessly slaughter its magnificent alpha male. (This video shows Cecil with his cubs at the national park).

In doing so, this sport-killing dentist has left a morally repugnant graffiti upon a wild canvas. Like the graffiti left in Joshua Tree National Park by André Saraiva or the myriad defacements of an attention seeker who foolishly shared her vandalism at more than ten national parks on her social media accounts. The selfishness of killing, of vandalism, of littering are at the heart of our disgust. As much as littering in the forest is a trespass of a right to a wilderness free of human influence, so too is trophy hunting, and poaching of a lion in a sanctuary, a trespass of our right to biodiversity, to an asylum of wild that is free from human debauchery and brutality.

So our horror at this tragedy is that there are places and animals who should be left alone – and the majority of us have made that moral contract through international laws and cross-cultural understandings. That is our consent – we will not kill endangered animals for fun, and we will leave that which is wild alone, for all our sakes.

In violating those explicit and implicit agreements to leave wildlife alone, we destroy ecosystems and biodiversity that will not be there for future generations. This trophy-hunter dentist has deprived us of real freedom, and left a tainted tyranny from which we cannot escape. In many ways, these wild places we hold sacred, these safe havens for wildlife, are fundamental to a truly free world and a human right to have them. And that is what he transgressed by taking Cecil’s life in such a callous, and torturous way.

And in many ways this dentist is symptomatic of the worst of our American culture – and the ways our democracy has become perverted. He is symptomatic of a culture that celebrates unmitigated human power and dominance, qualities that are inherently problematic to a free democratic society.

There are some who celebrate that human dominion. They believe all land, animals, and humans are for “use.” And they believe that environmental laws that limit the destruction of wilderness and wildlife somehow prohibit their right to what they call “freedom” but what they mean is “power.” This dentist didn’t want to be left alone when he killed two lions, a leopard, a rhino, and a bear. He just wanted to kill whatever he wanted to kill, and that isn’t freedom. It’s doing what he wants to do, regardless of the impact it has on others. Palmer, the trophy-hunting lion killer, already had a felony conviction for illegally killing a black bear. Clearly, he feels–no matter the feigned regret he claims–no obligation or moral duty to follow the laws that are our social contract with each other.

Real freedom is the ability to be free of that dominating influence of power. And that’s why we – and animals like Cecil – need serious wildlife protection laws if we want a truly free society. By protecting the sanctity of places that are free from human domination, we protect our own ability to be free.

By killing an animal that belonged to all of us, by not belonging to any of us, this power-hungry trophy-hunter put each of us in a cage where no matter what ends of the earth, an American can pay (his wealth a power over humans) to kill the wildest of animals in a place that was supposed to be safe. Is there nowhere then where nonhuman animals can go and be left alone?

And that is why we mourn Cecil, he is all the animals cruelly harmed, all the wild places torn asunder by greed. He is a wounded, crowded planet trying to be a community but violated by the darkness of greed and power. Without spaces and places free from the influence of those who would kill endangered animals – itself a violation of our right to a diverse and profound wild – none of us are free. We recognize that intuitively and we are outraged. We know that killing threatened and endangered animals (or imprisoning them in zoos) isn’t conservation. It’s just killing and exploitation.

At the heart of the fury and grief expressed over Cecil, we find two things: compassion over his suffering and an overwhelming sentiment of “leave lions alone!” Collectively, society expresses that sentiment so rarely, because it is silenced by the dominant (and incorrect) view that freedom means power, not consent.

In part because of poaching like this, lions will likely be extinct in the wild in our lifetimes. Here, in this moment, we recognize Cecil was not an individual’s to kill but rather ours to value, even if we never knew him or of him. His refuge was our refuge, and his ability to be left alone was a measure of our ability to be left alone. People are outraged because he represented real freedom, now and for the future.

As our human population continues to expand exponentially, far beyond the resources the planet provides us, large mammals like lions will become even more vulnerable. Already, lions are reproducing more slowly than the rate at which they will be poached. Because of population growth, climate change, industrial agriculture, and aggressive poaching like this, future generations will probably never have the privilege of living in a free world with wild lions.

Who are the people we want to make up our society? Are they greedy, bloodthirsty, power-driven trophy-hunting killers with an unquenchable hunger to deprive the rest of us (including future generations) of the freedom of the wild by exerting dominance over it? We create future generations and we create values in a democracy. If we value freedom we must value wilderness and wildness, and our wildlife trafficking, poaching, and trophy-hunting laws must reflect that.

Sign and share this petition asking U.S. Fish & Wildlife to protect our freedoms by fast-tracking the listing of African Lions as an “endangered species” and prohibiting the import of wild lions and their body parts (like Cecil’s head) as “trophies” in the U.S.