Tragedy for who?
The Government is to investigate how many wild boar are living in north Wiltshire after a motorist died after hitting one on the M4 through the county.The chairman of Natural England, Andrew Sells, confirmed his department would be sending an expert to join a local deer initiative, with the specific remit of finding out just how bad the wild boar problem is in the farming country north of Chippenham and in the Bradon Forest, near Malmesbury.
The action comes after the tragic death of Raymond Green, a 47-year-old from Royal Wootton Bassett, whose car hit a huge wild boar on the M4 near junction 17 and was then hit by a lorry in the first week of January. […]
My analysis of the news & framing terms of the article (x-posted from here):
Mr Gray said he was pleased the problem was at last being recognised. [...] once the monitoring work is completed, DEFRA will consider further steps to deal with the growing problem of wild boar
What are We going to do about the wild boar Problem?
Where have we heard this kind of language before? It often comes out as a justification just before further atrocities are committed towards an already long-persecuted population. What are We going to do about the Jewish Problem, the Gypsy Problem, the Badger Problem, the Rabbit Problem… etc. Who does the ‘we’ refer to and who gave ‘us’ the authority to arbitrarily deal out death in this matter?
Their population growth has been such in the Forest of Dean that there is now an annual cull, as gardens, parks and football pitches are dug up by the boar.
Our chosen haunts - those We create and maintain through great and continuous labour - take precedence over Theirs (wild boar are a woodland animal and their disturbance of the soil actively favours the growth of saplings in areas where grass otherwise dominates). When They invade and upset Our carefully laid schemes they forfeit their right not just to passage in those areas but to their lives even those scraps of woodland which We (in our temporary beneficence) have allowed to persist.
The action comes after the tragic death of Raymond Green, a 47-year-old from Royal Wootton Bassett, whose car hit a huge wild boar on the M4 near junction 17 and was then hit by a lorry in the first week of January.
When one motorist loses their life because of a collision with a wild boar (whose own loss of life is pointedly not considered ‘tragic’ or cause for concern in any way) it is taken as an call to arms to defend all motorists from the threat posed to them by the bodies of living animals. What of the threat posed to animals by the M4 and all the other rivers of flying steel which cut through their migratory routes and fence their tiny living spaces with the constant threat of death? Once again it recalls Derrick Jensen’s premise:
Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. ([url=http://www.derrickjensen.org/work/endgame/endgame-premises-english/]http://www.derrickjensen.org/work/endgame/endgame-premises-english/[/url])
Natural England does not carry out any formal monitoring of feral wild boar populations
There is a snarl behind the word ‘feral’ and further coded meanings behind the word ‘wild’, despite the attempts of some to rehabilitate them in a more positive light. At the heart of it lies disavowal: We are not ‘wild’ or ‘feral’ animals, and this is where our judge, jury & executioner authority comes from. We have cultivated ourselves just as we have cultivated the land and are now domesticated and civilised - or more correctly domesticating and civilising because the process is never complete and never unresisted. And yet the word ‘feral’ describes Us down to a ‘t’ if you take it to mean an animal that has not discovered its place in the ecosystem, and which (until it manages to do this) causes great damage to the native flora and fauna leading to simplification and ecological impoverishment, with only the strongest and most flexibly adapted capable of resisting its onslaught.
But the disavowal allows Us to ignore all that we have in common with these wild boar, which we in turn perceive entirely in terms of Them, which permits us to go on destroying them or keeping them down (it’s always a pushing down, coming from a fear of what may rise up after such long repression) as we see fit. That’s the point of this article.
Wild boar have recently re-established a presence in the UK after being driven to extinction probably during the 1200s. George Monbiot had a good article about them a few years back:
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/09/16/arrested-development/
What parallels can we draw between their rewilding experience and our own? How can we make alliances and start to protect them (and maybe have them protect us)?
Thoughts welcome
cheers,
Ian