532
throughout the years across New Zealand. An everyday fact. As evidenced, most
famously, by those thousands who helped restore the island in the Harauki Gulf
beyond Auckland, Tiri Tiri Matangi.
Employing often best conservation practices are systemic to the New Zealand
psyche, even as animal rights (at least for bio-invasives and all those other vertebrates and mammals consumed by a large meat-eating society) are largely cast to
the wind. This great ethical divide continues to rankle, dismay, and shatter any illusion of a formidable, all-encompassing ethic toward other species.
In every part of the world where we have worked, similar concatenations of citizen science, motivated volunteers, activists, and landholders have joined forces to
save such critically endangered species as Brazil’s Southern and Northern Muriqui
(genus Brachyteles) or Madagascar’s largest lemur, the Indri indri.
15
There are still
documented instants of hunters eating both Muriquis and Indris. But their biggest
threats continue to be deforestation and human, ecological illiteracy and/or indifference. Whether with the international trade (now largely illegal) of “exotic” psittacines (parrot family) poached at clay licks along the Peruvian Tambopata River;
threats to California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) from the lead of bullets
embedded in carcasses the glorious, largest North American land bird consumes;
16
the last few mountain lion populations in southern California;
17
new species of
pseudoscorpion in the Clough Cave at Sequoia National Park (one of some 80
known karst caves between Sequoia and Kings Canyon), who may number fewer
than a few hundred individuals;
18
or any number of other precious and unique creatures around the world, community conservation, individual animal rights, and the
brigades of conspicuous conscience at work to save life, pervades all such research,
response, and rescue missions. In Madagascar, our film crews were the first to film
the Lepilemur sahamalazensis, or sportive lemur, as well as the first to capture footage of the Blue-Eyed Black Lemur (Sclater’s Lemur, Eulemur macaco flavifrons),
one of two subspecies of the Black Lemur, and classified as critically endangered.
During the making of “Hotspots,” we were fortunate to film other rarities: a
paleopropithecus skull and bone fragments in a remote cave in Madagascar (the
50-pound Giant Lemur that went extinct as recently as 1000 years ago); a newly
discovered Titi monkey first seen in Bolivia’s Madidi National Park in the Upper
15 Madagascar’s largest remaining lemur. See, Primate Info Net, http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/indri; See also, op.cit., Mittermeier, Rylands and Wilson, pp. 28–175.
16 See “New Study: Over Two Thirds of Fatalities of Endangered California Condors Caused By
Lead Poisoning,” American Bird Conservancy (citing a 2012 collection of surveys by the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of
California at Santa Cruz and Davis, The Peregrine Fund, The San Diego Global and the Phoenix
Zoo), February 8, 2012, https://abcbirds.org/article/new-study-over-two-thirds-of-fatalities-ofendangered-california-condors-caused-by-lead-poisoning/. Accessed May 26, 2020.
17 See “California Lion Status and Population,” https://mountainlion.org/us/CA/-CA-status.php,
Accessed May 26, 2020.
18 See “27 new species unearthed from Sierra Nevada…” by Glen Martin, SFGate, January 19,
2006, https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CALIFORNIA-27-new-species-unearthed-fromSierra-2543060.php, Accessed May 26, 2020.
56 A Situational Animal Rights Ethic
throughout the years across New Zealand. An everyday fact. As evidenced, most
famously, by those thousands who helped restore the island in the Harauki Gulf
beyond Auckland, Tiri Tiri Matangi.
Employing often best conservation practices are systemic to the New Zealand
psyche, even as animal rights (at least for bio-invasives and all those other vertebrates and mammals consumed by a large meat-eating society) are largely cast to
the wind. This great ethical divide continues to rankle, dismay, and shatter any illusion of a formidable, all-encompassing ethic toward other species.
In every part of the world where we have worked, similar concatenations of citizen science, motivated volunteers, activists, and landholders have joined forces to
save such critically endangered species as Brazil’s Southern and Northern Muriqui
(genus Brachyteles) or Madagascar’s largest lemur, the Indri indri.
15
There are still
documented instants of hunters eating both Muriquis and Indris. But their biggest
threats continue to be deforestation and human, ecological illiteracy and/or indifference. Whether with the international trade (now largely illegal) of “exotic” psittacines (parrot family) poached at clay licks along the Peruvian Tambopata River;
threats to California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) from the lead of bullets
embedded in carcasses the glorious, largest North American land bird consumes;
16
the last few mountain lion populations in southern California;
17
new species of
pseudoscorpion in the Clough Cave at Sequoia National Park (one of some 80
known karst caves between Sequoia and Kings Canyon), who may number fewer
than a few hundred individuals;
18
or any number of other precious and unique creatures around the world, community conservation, individual animal rights, and the
brigades of conspicuous conscience at work to save life, pervades all such research,
response, and rescue missions. In Madagascar, our film crews were the first to film
the Lepilemur sahamalazensis, or sportive lemur, as well as the first to capture footage of the Blue-Eyed Black Lemur (Sclater’s Lemur, Eulemur macaco flavifrons),
one of two subspecies of the Black Lemur, and classified as critically endangered.
During the making of “Hotspots,” we were fortunate to film other rarities: a
paleopropithecus skull and bone fragments in a remote cave in Madagascar (the
50-pound Giant Lemur that went extinct as recently as 1000 years ago); a newly
discovered Titi monkey first seen in Bolivia’s Madidi National Park in the Upper
15 Madagascar’s largest remaining lemur. See, Primate Info Net, http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/indri; See also, op.cit., Mittermeier, Rylands and Wilson, pp. 28–175.
16 See “New Study: Over Two Thirds of Fatalities of Endangered California Condors Caused By
Lead Poisoning,” American Bird Conservancy (citing a 2012 collection of surveys by the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of
California at Santa Cruz and Davis, The Peregrine Fund, The San Diego Global and the Phoenix
Zoo), February 8, 2012, https://abcbirds.org/article/new-study-over-two-thirds-of-fatalities-ofendangered-california-condors-caused-by-lead-poisoning/. Accessed May 26, 2020.
17 See “California Lion Status and Population,” https://mountainlion.org/us/CA/-CA-status.php,
Accessed May 26, 2020.
18 See “27 new species unearthed from Sierra Nevada…” by Glen Martin, SFGate, January 19,
2006, https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CALIFORNIA-27-new-species-unearthed-fromSierra-2543060.php, Accessed May 26, 2020.
56 A Situational Animal Rights Ethic