As humans, we have a fascination with being able to touch things that would normally be dangerous. In recent years there has been a backlash against tiger temples, elephant rides and other tactile animal experiences, mainly because of concerns over animal welfare and the impacts that these attractions have on their possibly unwilling stars. Despite this, the opportunity to directly interact with animals still exerts a powerful draw. Given the opportunity recently to touch a young black rhino who was rescued after she was found sick and abandoned by her mother, I jumped at it, and did the stereotypical thing of feeding her and getting my picture taken.
Tactile experiences like this are moving, and it is hard to say no to the chance to touch such an animal. Why else would petting a dog or a cat be so satisfying? It is especially powerful when that animal appears to show some sort of affection for you. A squeak, a nuzzle or simply the act of following you all make you feel a connection with the animal that is hard to brush off as it merely wanting food. We are desperate to anthropomorphise these animals and make ourselves think that there is a special bond between us. This is partly why it is relatively easy to raise money for animal orphanages. It is easy to sell someone the story of a cute baby elephant being saved after being abandoned by its mother, but much harder to sell the worth of a 5 year research project looking at the effect that soil type has on the vegetation that elephants eat.
This desire to be close with these representations of nature is strange when compared to what is many people’s vision of an ultimate nature. Vast wild landscapes, void of people, where you can be for days without encountering another human. Places where large animals roam, free from interference, and a person can pit their wits against the wilderness. Nature documentaries speak to the desire for these places and take great pains to remove all traces of people and their effects from the programming. Even if we do not see it on a day to day basis, these tv programmes reassure us that somewhere there is the nature that we dream of.
The desire for wilderness and the desire for experiences where we are in immediate contact with the animals that we imagine inhabit these wildernesses clash starkly and it reveals a dissonance in our thinking. We want to imagine that there is a nature out there that exists free from human influence and separate from society. But we also want there to be parts of this nature that we bring into society for our own pleasure and so that we can feel special by touching it. We want the same animals to be fierce, wild and ‘other’ in some contexts, and cuddly, affectionate and ‘human’ in others. Both of these things cause problems. Certainly zoos and orphanages make great contributions towards conservation and raise a lot of money for the cause. But when not done well experiences where you get close to animals are damaging for animals and people alike. Visions of wilderness make us think that nature is somewhere ‘out there’ and think less of the nature that is all around us just because it contains signs of human presence. They can also erase the presence of people who rely on these ‘wild’ landscapes to survive, and violent histories in which people were evicted to create them.
We need to examine this apparent contradiction but also, conservationists and environmentalists need to develop more interesting narratives that don’t just rely on the cuteness of baby animals or the call of the wild. I’m not saying that we should be rid of all orphanages and stop trying to protect landscapes that have little human influence. But orphanages are very expensive for the conservation gains they achieve compared to other things and nature doesn’t solely reside in places where there are no people. We need to be better storytellers and tell the stories of our work that persuade people that nature is worth saving, and not just because they have seen a cute baby animal.