The tolerable kind
by Lionel Wijesiri
Come to think of it, a lot of my fellow citizens do not seem to know
much about their neighbours -the small creatures which live alongside
them. It was just two months ago, when I saw in a national newspaper a
photograph of egrets feeding in a canal.
The writer has identified them as swans. Another monthly journal
carried a crystal clear photograph of a Water Monitor Lizard sent by a
correspondent who described it as a young crocodile.
Closer to home, the other day I was listening to my nephew (an
engineer by profession) advising his children to keep off from all
snakes and lizards since they are venomous.
This particular situation - the lack of even basic knowledge of the
most common aspects of our biodiversity - acts a major deterrence when
it comes to raising awareness of environmental issues among the Sri
Lankan people.
This lack of awareness is also one of the main reasons for our
inability to coexist peacefully with the other living beings who happen
to be our neighbours.
That is why countless insects which find their way into our
households, from beetles to geckos, end up having their lives needlessly
snuffed out.
Spiders of all shapes and sizes, which help prey on unwanted insect
pests, get turned into dirty smears on the wall with a rolled-up
newspaper in return for their services.
No mercy is given, nothing at all. And if coexisting with the
harmless species is already out of question, what more the idea of
living with those that may actually cause bodily harm but which would
ordinarily go all out to avoid human contact.
What will it take to convince our people that destroying our fellow
creatures are not only harmful to humankind, but also morally repugnant,
and instinctively insane? How can we give our people a sense of what
they’re missing, what they’ve lost, forgotten? I don’t believe any of
these could come about from reading books, watching nature documentaries
on Discovery channel or trips to sanctuaries.
This knowledge can only come from first-hand experience. The
experience that by coexisting with animals, we will be provided a
connection with nature and reinforce our respect for all living things.
The knowledge that we can preserve open space and resources to ensure
that animal lives are protected and that they may also thrive and when
conflicts occur over shared space, we should seek humane solutions. We
cannot protect what we cannot love. And we cannot love what we do not
know.
Indeed, there are a great many mysteries out there in the natural
world, but the root of the problem comes from our self-imposed blindness
and myopia.
Personally, I cannot imagine a world without animals. I cannot
imagine my life without my companion animals. I cannot imagine a walk in
the bush without seeing birds, squirrels, rabbits, and when I am really
lucky, the occasional mongoose, skunk or fowl. I dream of a world in
which we have learned to coexist with animals and abuse of animals is
unacceptable.
The day we can truly understand how animals co-habit with each other,
we will begin to realise how much wiser they are than us in the fine art
of survival on this resilient but ravaged world. And how much poorer
this world becomes when we arrogantly destroy them and their communities
to make evermore room for a single, insensitive, homogeneous human
culture? |