When Some Species Are Special

I was in a pretty sour mood this morning. (What, you noticed?) So I figure it's only appropriate that I also now direct you to this more optimistic response to the ruling on the wolf hunts out west, which focuses more on the hope that the wolves will be returned to the endangered species list.

But I suppose the reason I can't get too excited about this is the same reason my reaction to the news out of Japan didn't carry much relief either. Sure, it's great that people can't indiscriminately kill individual members of endangered species. And it's great that so far the Japanese village spotlighted in The Cove hasn't killed any dolphins this year. But when the only reason not to kill an animal is because of the "endangered" or popular status of his or her species -- when the focus is on the numbers and the species, rather than on the unnecessary killing of animals in general -- we're pretty well stating that it's OK to kill animals in general, as long as they're not special animals.

I don't know how to celebrate that some of those dolphins in Japan weren't killed this week when so many of them were still ripped out of their homes and away from their families to serve as captive entertainment and when so many pilot whales were still casually slaughtered. And I don't know how to get too excited about the possibility of wolves being relisted if being on a list is the best reason we can come up with for not killing them, when we still as a society see nothing morally wrong with gunning down animals in forests, orphaning the young, slitting throats in slaughterhouses, traumatizing and separating families, etc. until or unless those animals are on a special list. An animal whose species isn't endangered doesn't want to die any more than an animal whose species is.