Against The Current

I wept as my husband read me the lines in which Barry Lopez describes his practice of removing dead animals from the road. I’d thought I was the only one. I drive an hour to work each day in a car I have come to call a “killing machine.” I have run over a snake and a vole, and a ruffed grouse once flew into my front end and died. I have lost count of the dead animals I have moved to the side of the road, not only to respect their lives but to aid other animals in their struggle for survival. We should all slow down and be aware that we share our roads with other living creatures who are just trying to survive another day.

I have been a fan of Barry Lopez’s writing ever since I read his collection of American Indian myths on a twenty-one-day river trip through the Grand Canyon. Michael Shapiro’s interview with him [“Against the Current,” June 2006] helped me appreciate Lopez’s work all the more. The stories he told about living on the banks of the McKenzie River in Oregon reminded me of my time as a Student Conservation Association volunteer, when I flew over the Oregon wilderness and saw the patchwork quilt of clear-cuts on the landscape below.

By writing about remote places, Lopez says, he has indirectly caused damage to some of them, because his readers have tried to follow in his footsteps. I know how he feels. I lead kayaking tours throughout Central and South America, and I often find myself in remote places that even few natives know about. These locations make a powerful impression on visitors, but I also fear that I am contributing to their destruction. Along the banks of the Pacuare River in Costa Rica, for example, “eco-lodges” are being built to house tourists. But the river is also threatened by a hydroelectric project, and the eco-tourism business is the only thing keeping the dam at bay. It is a Catch-22: I am helping to change the very thing I want to preserve.

The pride Barry Lopez takes in having had anything to do with introducing a nonnative species of wolf into my backyard makes me furious. Anyone who views a wolf as a noble and fine animal and not a murderous predator is simply uninformed.

Has Lopez ever seen the carnage of a dead cow, colt, sheep, or dog after it’s been killed by wolves? I have. My friends have observed wolves eating an elk cow alive while she screamed in agony. Cougar kills pale in comparison to the violence of a wolf attack. These animals are vicious killers, and our forefathers were wise to eradicate them.

Incidents of wolves stalking and behaving aggressively toward humans are becoming common. My husband and I have to consider whether our grandchildren can safely play outside on our property, and we have chosen not to have a dog. Six years ago this was not a problem, but wolves breed like rabbits.

I see that Lopez enjoys watching fish. How would he like it if someone introduced sharks into his river?

Tammy Stone of Idaho [Correspondence, September 2006] is furious with Barry Lopez [“Against the Current,” interview by Michael Shapiro, June 2006] for having helped reintroduce “nonnative” wolves into “her” backyard. But Stone’s backyard has been home to wolves for centuries, and those of us with European ancestry are the real nonnatives in Idaho, and everywhere else in North America.

Stone also claims that our “forefathers were wise to eradicate” wolves because they are “a murderous predator.” Taking her argument to its logical conclusion would make it equally wise to eradicate all carnivores simply because she finds these animals’ means of survival offensive. Our forefathers were not “wise” to eradicate wolves: they were upsetting a balance that they did not understand or respect.

Stone asks, “Has Lopez seen the carnage of a dead cow, colt, sheep, or dog after it’s been killed by wolves?” I ask: Has Stone seen the carnage in a factory slaughterhouse, where the assembly line is often run too fast for the animals to be properly stunned before the brutal kill? It is easy to judge wolves for the manner in which they get their meals while remaining blithely removed from the process by which one’s own food is obtained.

If “cougar kills pale in comparison to wolf kills,” as Stone asserts, then where on this spectrum are the pathological atrocities committed daily by our own culture? We may not have blood directly on our hands, but we generate this pathology through our lack of connection to the natural world. Stone’s distorted, anthropocentric worldview is precisely what is killing the planet.