Adams’ article reads like dystopian fiction, making it easy to swallow and interesting to devour. It also connects us to the subject by directly linking it to us. Just the phrase “extinction of relationships” is pretty intense. We often think of extinct creatures in how they were by themselves and we forget that they had impacts and connections to other organisms in their environment. They had predators and prey and mutualistic relationships. And when they went extinct? That’s when it got out of balance.
The ivory-billed woodpecker was thought to be one of those lost links that were done in by what Adams called the “tragic, human-generated mass extinction of species.” But Dr. Jackson searched for it anyways, like the scientists who spent years looking for the missing link or lost civilizations. He was curious, like all scientists should be. And he was so seemingly close to finding one. This is where Adams tried to hit me in the feels – he described how it might have felt for the woodpecker to hear the sounds of its species, after living alone for so long. They’re social creatures and it must have been terrible to be one of none. It must have been heartbreaking to find that it was just an elaborate trap by humans, the harbingers of species extinction. If we put ourselves in the scenarios Adams describes, we’d be just as upset and angry.
But do animals feel like we do? Did the woodpecker really comprehend his/her solitary life at an emotional level? Would it matter to us if it did? I think it would because if we felt what we caused them, we’d be begging for it to stop. Adams writes, “we perpetuate our ecological crisis partly by repressing this reality that feels unbearable,” which is a genuine summation. I also understand the worries of being too anthropomorphic because we’ll never fully 100% understand these creatures. Yet, they would be worse off if we decided they had no feelings and therefore could do whatever we want to them.
We can’t separate ourselves from the rest of nature, nor should we want to. We’re already messed up because most of us lack direct contact with nature. As HSM as this sounds, we’re all in this together, for better or worse. Congrats to the woodpecker for not being as extinct as everyone thought, but there are others that haven’t been so lucky. Adams states that our relationship with nature is influenced by our culture and society, so maybe it’s time we make it a culture and a society that doesn’t take it for granted.
