“. . .numbers weigh only in the balance if united by combination and led by knowledge.”  Karl Marx, Inaugural Address to the International (1864)

Mary Ann Evans, known to the world as George Elliot, wrote many enduring novels. Middle March, considered her signature work, played with a theme that marked much of her writing: the good in the world quite often depends on everyday people involved in unhistorical acts. In other words, individuals come to realize that they must look beyond their everyday lives, relationships, work and troubles, to take action for their class, nation and all people. A new millennial version of this consciousness would also embrace the realization that their self-interest is bound up with the environment and all other beings.

The needs of working people are many. Union jobs are needed to pay for mortgages, for food and for the education of our children. All the gaps, from income to education, between white and black and other people of color, between men and women, between nations, need to be closed. The country needs high-speed rail along with solar, tidal and wind power. The eternal quest for economic growth and the impact of population growth on the economy and the environment needs serious study. Housing, especially housing patterns, need to be rethought, especially to avoid the sprawling out into flood plains, fire threatened areas and wildlife habitat.  Taxing the rich and the nationalizing of the energy, insurance and financial sectors are a must. We need to work toward a revolution and the warm sun of socialism to change the culture of profit mania and self-aggrandizement.

So why should we care about a proposal of the US Fish And Wildlife Service to kill owls? Purportedly, this plan in the Pacific Northwest is to save Spotted owls whose old growth habitat are experiencing incursions of the Northern Barred owls from Canada. There is some evidence that the northern species is edging out its southern neighbor. Let’s look at their cynical idea of killing owls to save owls. Will it “work”? In whose interest is this program being initiated? How does it match up with all the stark needs in the laundry list above?

The NATO and US military are in expansionist mode, especially in the Middle East.

 Violence is endemic in our capitalist culture today. A culture of violence feeds both the military and our prisons. The USA has more than two million people, especially youth and people of color, in its prisons. This is more than any other country in the world. A quiet desperation is palpable in youth and “gap” statistics. More than one in three young families (37%) with children were living in poverty by 2010. Twenty-three states have drastically cut public education last year. Rick Perry’s Texas alone cut pre-kindergarten programs for 100,000 children, disproportionately impacting people of color.

 

Violence is implicit in these institutions and gaps. It must be mitigated. In the process of the movements in opposition to racism, the death penalty and for peace, youth, the environment, the all-embracing people’s movement comes in contact with new adherents. The 2008 electoral movement to elect Barak Obama swept together many disparate movements and people. We will need that unity again in 2012 and beyond. The moment demands no less. Those opposed to violence to other beings must also be embraced in this broad front.

Just what is driving the Barred owls thrust into Spotted owl turf? I went to Yale University’s Vertebrate Zoology collection to find out. The significant overall size advantage of the larger Barred owl needed no measuring devise. I did measure the talons of both the Spotted owl and Barred owl. It is the physical structure that makes first contact with prey. The Barred owls had an average 2 mm larger talons that the Spotted owls. Peter and Rosemary Grant, working with the famous Darwin Finches of the Galápagos Islands, taught us what even tiny differences meant.

 

In the Grant’s study, the birds with a 0.5 mm greater beak depth had a significant advantage eating seeds, particularly during stressful drought periods. They tended to be healthier and procreate. The Barred owl and its closely related cousin, the Spotted owl, are contesting for wood rats, flying squirrels and other prey in the old growth forests— selective advantage to the Barred. They are not an invasive species. They are simply expanding their range. In other words, the Barred owls will keep coming into forests occupied by Spotted owls. Hybrids have already been reported.

 

We have another self-interest to stop this violent proposal of the government. As owls go, so go the forests. These animals are the canaries in the forest. They are an indicator species for forest ecosystem sustainability. When we don’t pay attention to these upper level predators, bad things happen. Lyme disease started in a number of ways, but consensus science says the killing of predators, such as wolves and mountain lions, caused an imbalance with prey species such as deer. As deer are the final feeding destination of the adult tick that carries the causative agent of Lyme disease, it opened the door to this debilitating disease. So the killing of predators brought about the unintended consequence of ecosystem imbalance and Lyme disease.

 

Unfortunately, when disease happens that affect our species, people too often look for the quick solution. It is not always, maybe in most cases, the best solution. Take what happened on Monhegan Island in Penobscot Bay, Maine. This mid-coast island, about 14 miles from the mainland, has a long history as an artists’ enclave. When cases of Lyme disease began to escalate, islanders reached for the quick solution. They blamed the other victims of ecosystem imbalance. They killed all the deer on the island.

 

Corporate sponsors of this owl kill program are already shooting owls. This heinous proposal is in a discussion phase headed by the Interior Department. Its impact was tested, as mentioned above, by a limited kill of barred owls on private land and beginning on our public forests. Are corporate elements seeking to eliminate all owls as indicator species of forest health to open more old growth forests to logging? Logging is actually written in the Interior Department plan to supposedly reduce fires and create jobs. These are the old Trojan horses for private companies to make more incursions into old growth forests on public lands. They care about one thing – profits. The Green Diamond Resource Company killed owls right on its land. Early data confirmed what some of us predicted. Forty nine percent of the Barred owls killed were new arrivals. In other words, the owls keep coming and the gun barrels keep smoking.

 

People can organize themselves, nature cannot. The Barred owls will continue to come into Spotted owl territory. Owl Armageddon will continue. Insensitivity to state and institutional violence, coupled with mass media preoccupation with group and individual heinous acts, have warped our culture. We can’t let the slide into insensitivity and non-caring continue on any level. It’s time to draw a line, including a green line, in the sand. The best way to defend old growth forests is public involvement. Defend and extent the forests. Killing owls does the opposite.

 

Some in the environmental movement give up on people and turn their attention narrowly to domestic animals and wildlife. There is an opportunity here for a push in the opposite direction. With left and progressive movements showing sensitivity to animal rights and the defense of wildlife, in short other beings, we broaden the environmental movement with a chance to open dialogues with other peoples’ movements.

 

The benefits can be mutual and sustaining for defenders of other beings with the environment, women, youth and labor movements, especially the latter. Those whose focus is the quality of life of other beings have a richer understanding of how that quality is connected to people. In turn, the labor movement can enhance the consciousness, in some cases reawaken the consciousness of the defenders of other beings to the plight faced by workers from the struggle to pay rent, mortgages, and medical bills to keeping youth off the streets and in productive channels.  The left is needed in both instances with its many lessons in unity across class, racial and ethnic boundaries. The millions of dollars projected for killing owls can be transferred to meet desperate needs of our people and for the environment.

 

In short, we need to change our culture to one that respects and nourishes life of all peoples and other beings. Rick Perry was questioned in a Republican primary debate concerning the large number of death penalties carried out in his state of Texas during his ten years as Governor. Before Perry could respond, the audience began to cheer that high number. In capsule that moment captured the descent some, especially the Tea Party, in our country would take the rest of us spiraling after them. Do not let them take us there.

 

The “saving” of Spotted owls by killing thousands of Barred owls is bad science, unsustainable ecologically and indefensible morally. Stop this program now and save old growth forests by protecting them, not killing owls. If your serenity was disturbed by all this, then do as George Eliot exhorted all of us to do. It’s time to look beyond our immediate circumstances. It’s time to take action.

 

Sign the We The People petition to the President. Send this to ten or more of your most responsible friends. Ask them to do the same. IF WE GET 25,000 SIGNATURES, IN THIRTY DAYS, IT GETS SENT TO GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS FOR POLICY REVIEW. Act now.