533
Amazon, but never in Peru’s Tambopata National Reserve; the first footage ever
captured of a Southern Bamboo Rat (Kannabateomys amblyonyx) foraging and peeing sometime around midnight; nine new invertebrate troglophiles and troglobites at
Clough Cave, with National Park Cave specialist, Joel Despain; and the first ever
footage of one of the most endangered mammals in North America, the Pacific
Pocket Mouse (Perognathus longimembris pacificus) rediscovered in 1993 after
presumed extinction, at the Marine Base Camp Pendleton just North of San Diego.
Amid rattlesnakes and scorpions, we were able to film the little mouse just after
midnight.
19
Of course, the irony was not lost on any of us involved in the making of “Hotspots”
that we should rejoice upon seeing for less than a minute one of the rarest rats in the
world (in Peru); and that the US marines had been mandated by Congress and the
1973 Endangered Species Act to use every means at their disposal to save a mouse
numbering fewer than 300 individuals, while New Zealanders were killing both
mice and rats in an orgy of concentrated malevolence. And rodenticides—and freeway traffic—were killing off the last few apex predators in southern California,
Puma concolor, the cougar, or mountain lion. That hunters were still killing some
of the most iconic species on the planet, for food, skins, zoos, for anything that
could turn a fast profit. Even killing Jaguars—largely at the bequest of corporate
interests throughout China and the rest of Asia—in otherwise sacrosanct Suriname.
The coalitions and group efforts that would save the Jaguar, Mountain lion, the
Pseudoscorpion, the Kakapo, and California condor remain a stark reminder that
annually, just in the United States, approximately “670,000 dogs and 860,000 cats”
are euthanized at shelters.
20
Ethics and mathematics collide. It is emotionally wearisome, but certainly not impossible, to save one life, even as millions of others perish. It does not require that much energy to hold up a conviction, a light in the dark
(Fig. 56.3).
56.4 Every Voice
Nonetheless, against such deep chasms within human nature—hatred, fear, psychopathology, greed—animal rights, and the distressing contradictions and outright
paradoxical nature of its relationship to conservation biology notwithstanding, one
must celebrate the collaborative zeal of saving species, which means individuals, no
matter what it takes. Passion to perpetuate the life force in all her splendor that is
neither discouraged nor diminished by the internecine political, economic, cultural,
and zoonotic mayhem of the early twenty-first century is key to saving ourselves
(not that that is the motive). Individuals are situated ethically beside other life forms
19 http://hotspots-thefilm.org/about/page21/page21.html.
20 See “Pet Statistics,” ASPCA, https://www.aspca.org/animal-homelessness/shelter-intake-andsurrender/pet-statistics, Accessed May 26, 2020.
56.4 Every Voice
Amazon, but never in Peru’s Tambopata National Reserve; the first footage ever
captured of a Southern Bamboo Rat (Kannabateomys amblyonyx) foraging and peeing sometime around midnight; nine new invertebrate troglophiles and troglobites at
Clough Cave, with National Park Cave specialist, Joel Despain; and the first ever
footage of one of the most endangered mammals in North America, the Pacific
Pocket Mouse (Perognathus longimembris pacificus) rediscovered in 1993 after
presumed extinction, at the Marine Base Camp Pendleton just North of San Diego.
Amid rattlesnakes and scorpions, we were able to film the little mouse just after
midnight.
19
Of course, the irony was not lost on any of us involved in the making of “Hotspots”
that we should rejoice upon seeing for less than a minute one of the rarest rats in the
world (in Peru); and that the US marines had been mandated by Congress and the
1973 Endangered Species Act to use every means at their disposal to save a mouse
numbering fewer than 300 individuals, while New Zealanders were killing both
mice and rats in an orgy of concentrated malevolence. And rodenticides—and freeway traffic—were killing off the last few apex predators in southern California,
Puma concolor, the cougar, or mountain lion. That hunters were still killing some
of the most iconic species on the planet, for food, skins, zoos, for anything that
could turn a fast profit. Even killing Jaguars—largely at the bequest of corporate
interests throughout China and the rest of Asia—in otherwise sacrosanct Suriname.
The coalitions and group efforts that would save the Jaguar, Mountain lion, the
Pseudoscorpion, the Kakapo, and California condor remain a stark reminder that
annually, just in the United States, approximately “670,000 dogs and 860,000 cats”
are euthanized at shelters.
20
Ethics and mathematics collide. It is emotionally wearisome, but certainly not impossible, to save one life, even as millions of others perish. It does not require that much energy to hold up a conviction, a light in the dark
(Fig. 56.3).
56.4 Every Voice
Nonetheless, against such deep chasms within human nature—hatred, fear, psychopathology, greed—animal rights, and the distressing contradictions and outright
paradoxical nature of its relationship to conservation biology notwithstanding, one
must celebrate the collaborative zeal of saving species, which means individuals, no
matter what it takes. Passion to perpetuate the life force in all her splendor that is
neither discouraged nor diminished by the internecine political, economic, cultural,
and zoonotic mayhem of the early twenty-first century is key to saving ourselves
(not that that is the motive). Individuals are situated ethically beside other life forms
19 http://hotspots-thefilm.org/about/page21/page21.html.
20 See “Pet Statistics,” ASPCA, https://www.aspca.org/animal-homelessness/shelter-intake-andsurrender/pet-statistics, Accessed May 26, 2020.
56.4 Every Voice