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When the species that were there “first” are competing for habitat with a species that came later, they assert that the latter should be eradicated

In championing such views, the movement paradoxically has embraced the use of traps, poisons, fire, and hunting, even when these cause harm, suffering, and environmental degradation

In San Francisco, on the Channel Islands, all across the United States, plants and animals are being trapped, poisoned, hunted, burned, and destroyed by people who claim the mantel of environmentalism

And it is getting worse and increasingly violent, both in rhetoric (fish they don’t value are called “missiles with fins”) and in deeds.

Even the science writer for the New York Times has weighed in, suggesting mass killing and the eating of animals that do not pass the arbitrary litmus test of worthiness by environmentalists.

In a losing battle to return North America to a mythical state that existed before European colonization, they are proposing a slaughter with no end.

Is this really what environmentalism should be?

To assert that the world must remain as it is today and to act on that assertion by condemning to death those species who threaten that prevailing order, does not reject human interference in the natural world, it reaffirms it. 

An authentic environmentalism would not advocate that humans seek out and destroy living things for simply obeying the dictates of the natural world, such as migration and natural selection. 

It would not condone the killing of those plants and animals who find themselves in parts of the world where, for whatever arbitrary reason—be they economic, commercial, or aesthetic—some humans do not want them to be. An authentic environmentalism would recognize that such determinations are not for us to make, because in seeking to undo what nature inevitably does, we merely exacerbate suffering, killing and the destruction of natural places we claim to oppose, with no hope of ever gaining the ends we seek. It is to declare an unending war on nature and our home.

we put all living creatures, including ourselves, in danger as well

And just as disturbing, we open the floodgates of expression to our darker natures, by teaching others disdain and suspicion of the “foreign” and reverence for the familiar and the “native.”

The same forces of nature which created the world we live in today are shaping it even now.

Our actions, and our presence, being as much a part of that system as any other living thing that ever was, will shape and mold how that future will look

Yet there is no compelling reason to assert that any one outcome would be more preferable than any other.

Why is the starling less worthy of life and compassion than the spotted owl?

Why does the carp swimming gracefully in a Japanese Zen garden inspire peace and serenity, but when swimming with the same grace and beauty in Lake Michigan, such horror, disdain, and scorn?  Because some humans among us say it is so? Because they impact narrow aesthetic or commercial interests?

As perhaps the most intelligent and without a doubt the most resourceful species yet to evolve on our planet, humans have a moral obligation to ensure that we use our unique abilities for good, and not harm.

We are obligated to consider how our actions impact the other earthlings who share our home. And to determine, with all of our gifts of intellect and compassion, how we can meet our needs in the most generous and considerate means possible.

Sadly, as a species, we have yet to comprehensively and collectively determine how we might do this.

But that, in truth, is our most solemn duty, and the end every environmentalist should be seeking.

On a tiny planet surrounded by the infinite emptiness of space, in a universe in which life is so exceedingly rare as to render every blade of grass, every insect that crawls, and every animal that walks the Earth an exquisite, wondrous rarity, it is breathtakingly myopic, arrogant, and quite simply inaccurate to label any living thing found anywhere on the planet which gave it life as “alien” or “non-native.”  There is simply no such thing as an “invasive” species.

We must turn our attention away from the futile effort to hold or return our environment to some mythic state of perfection that never existed toward the meaningful goal of ensuring that every life that appears on this Earth is welcomed and respected as the glorious, cosmic miracle it actually is.