VandeBoom: ‘We must share it with our wildlife’
I lost count of the number of dead animals I’ve seen on the side of Highway 82 in Pitkin County a long time ago. I remember one year, I tried to keep track, but somewhere around 20, I couldn’t do it anymore. My heart broke at seeing bloated, decaying, maggot and fly-ridden corpses morbidly decorating Highway 82. A bleak reminder that we humans have dominated a space that was once pristine wildlife habitat in order to fulfill our own human-centered desires to play, sleep, eat and enjoy the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
I’m earning my MSL in Animal Law through the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School. I’m advocating in favor of Safe Passages and their plans for a wildlife crossing in Pitkin County. This is infrastructure that our community desperately needs, just look at the shoulder of 82 any day of the week during any season of the year.
Wildlife and humans in Pitkin County do not live in a vacuum from one another. On the contrary, we are a multi-species community, a political theory developed by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, largely discussed in their work “Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights.” Ignoring or denying that reality serves neither humans nor non-human animals that reside in this county.
The wildlife here is sentient, just like we humans are. While their inner lives, herd lives, communication methods and relationships look and are different from ours, it doesn’t negate their biological sentience. Nor does that difference exclude them from being members of our community, with whom we share this land.
Donaldson and Kymlicka’s theory maintains that animals, and in this specific case, Pitkin County wildlife, are not simply a means to our human ends, but have rights themselves and these rights should be respected. They outline four broad categories in which wild animals are vulnerable because of human action and decision. Three-fourths of these directly revolve around wildlife crossings.
Habitat Loss — something we have created in Pitkin County by the very nature of developing the area for living, educating, recreating, working and driving in.
Spillover Harms — there are myriad ways to define this, but one is the very fact that we have a high-speed roadway dividing up the land and driving vehicles that can and do kill and injure both human and non-human animals.
Positive Impact/Intervention — here is where Pitkin County can shift the paradigms above. Humans can and do have positive impacts on wildlife by proactively shifting things we may have already created that harm animals. In this specific incidence, it would be providing wildlife crossings in Pitkin County to mitigate the habitat damage we’ve already constructed and is nearly impossible to undo.
The multi-species community political theory is one largely developed around the ideas and concepts of sovereignty, especially for wildlife. While breaking down the philosophical and historical definitions of such a concept is beyond the scope of this letter, it’s applicable to building wildlife crossings in spaces where humans have (often ruthlessly) encroached on wildlife sovereignty and territory. Renowned animal legal scholar Steven Wise commented that wildlife should have bodily integrity and autonomy. While we are not there with such things as hunting and wildlife management, there are other options for expanding the autonomy of wildlife in Pitkin County. One way to support the sovereignty of our wildlife community members is to provide that bodily autonomy by fixing the lethal mess we’ve caused when building roads in wildlife’s natural habitat. One way to fix the lethal human-created mess is to build safe passages for wildlife to cross the dangerous roads we’ve carved up their territories with. Wildlife corridors provide just one avenue of autonomy for wildlife in this human-dominated community.
This leads me to consider how we’ve already built human-life corridors in our county. My teen and preteen sons regularly use RFTA, and when needing to cross 82 to grab the correct bus, they often have underpass or overpass options to utilize while actively avoiding the dangerous vehicular traffic on 82. We aren’t reinventing the wheel here; we already understand that crossing that road on foot is potentially deadly. Now, we must accept the fact that the lethality risk is not just affecting humans, but largely affecting the wildlife because they do not have an alternative option to exercise their bodily autonomy and sovereignty of movement.
We must ask ourselves, what is the relationship Pitkin County wants to have with its wildlife neighbors? Is it one of segregation, death and human-exceptionalism? Is that the legacy of this riparian ecosystem nestled in the great Rocky Mountains? Or do we want to be known for co-existence, positive impact and intervention? Where we’ve developed a relationship, and eventual legacy, that we did all we could to truly foster, nourish and support a multi-species community. A county that sees its non-human animal residents as true and worthy community members? These are the questions residents and leaders must ask themselves and then, honestly answer.
I know that as an animal law scholar, Pitkin county resident, community member, mom, animal lover and human, my answer is I want to see wildlife crossings in Pitkin County. I want to actively help reduce the amount of senseless death littered along our highway’s shoulder. I’ve contributed to the fundraising campaign for Safe Passages, and it is something I intend to do again as this project moves forward. This is a cause I support with my education, heart and wallet. I hope our community and leaders will support this much-needed adjustment too.
I leave you with a quote from a familiar face who is, sadly, no longer here to advocate for wildlife as passionately as he did: “We don’t own the planet Earth, we belong to it. And we must share it with our wildlife.” ― Steve Irwin
