American Symbols

The bald eagle can finally come off the endangered species list. This is great news. And very fitting for the Fourth of July holiday.

Then I heard this on the news: "The Bald eagle is as American as..."

It is sad that a great American symbol was on the brink of extinction in the first place. So "American" was this species that it was killed off in mass numbers until almost was wiped off the face of the Earth. It's not sad because it is a symbol, but because eagles are living creatures that also call this world home.

The "threatened and endangered list" is a symbol to me. It is a symbol of all that is wrong with our interactions with animals (by "animals" I include fish and birds-it's my personal generalized term of non-plant, non-human species even though I know it's not proper). It is a symbol of our past stupidity and ignorance. Many endangered animals are symbols of some sort (not just in the U. S.)- grizzlies, wolves, tigers, pandas, etc. I think some of these animals wouldn't be as much of a symbol if they were not on the list. Wolves were never a symbol before-they were (and still are) hated and killed off. Now with their "recovery", they are a symbol of all that is wild.

Also on the subject of American sybmols, I had to laugh when a buffalo statue was unvieled in West Yellowstone a few weeks ago. A mighty, magnificant buffalo statue. A symbol of the Great Plains and Yellowstone. Yet in reality buffalo are slaughtered by the hundreds every year. I enjoy seeing a nice animal statue as much as the next guy but what's wrong with that picture?! Even in the days of colonial expansion,(European descended) people loved the buffalo so much that they annihilated them.

Animals coming off the list will never be truly "recovered." The recovered populations are simply at more manageable numbers to humans, at lower than natural population levels. What the ecosystem can sustain and what humans want to tolerate are completely different things. Animal populations just cannot compete with the human need to alter natural landscapes and control everything.