One million vertebrate creatures lose their lives daily on America’s roads because of collusions with cars, trucks, trains, planes and boats — 11.1 lost lives every second. That results in 365 million deaths annually. Some experts say the actual figures exceed 400 million deaths yearly.
“For North Americans to kill 11.1 vertebrate creatures every second as they scurry across our roadways, fly through the air, or swim in bodies of water around the clock without end and without reason—must be the most amoral and unprincipled savage act in the universe. To kill 1 million a day and 365 million annually runs beyond the scope of understanding.” FHW
On one of my bicycle rides from Canada to Mexico down the Continental Divide, wildlife experts placed colored flags for 10 miles alongside the road to mark every animal run over by cars, trucks or busses. (It’s Route 3 in Canada that leads into Route 93 in Canada and continues south into the United States.)
I picked up a brochure that gave the species of the animal signified by the flag color. On a bicycle, at 12 miles per hour, I don’t just fly by the flags as so many colored flowers, but in this case, every flag signified a creature that suffered an instant death or endured a horrible death from being wounded by a vehicle traveling at 65 miles per hour.
The colors astounded me because they equated to: bear, deer, antelope, eagles, hawks, black birds, geese, robins, blue birds, turtles, skunks, swans, mice, fox, coyotes, elk, moose, crows, ducks, hummingbirds, rats, squirrels, bats, chip monks, wild pigs, mountain lions, lynx, beavers, rabbits, owls, martens, ferrets, prairie dogs and well, you get the picture because it extends to another 100 colored flags.
As I pedaled my bike down this “death alley”, I couldn’t help but feel a kind of sickening feeling welling up in my stomach.
“My God,” I muttered. “We humans kill an astounding number of other creatures with no thought whatsoever. And, we kill them not for food, but because they were going about their own lives. We kill them because they chose the wrong time to cross our asphalt jungles covering the wilderness.”
The Numbing Numbers
“Everyday in the U.S., 254 million motor vehicles hit the road, and one million animals get hit by motor vehicles. That's counting cars, buses, motorbikes, and trucks, but not ATVs, snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles. The figure includes mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, but not insects and bugs, which somehow never count. Every year our nation's experimenters kill 100 million lab animals, hunters kill 200 million "game" animals, and motorists kill nearly 400 million road animals. For every dead animal counted, three or four more die unnoticed. Even at 55 M.P.H., we smell the remains of far more dead skunks than we see. The walking wounded die far from the road, so only instantly killed animals are seen and get counted.” Source: www.CultureChange.org
A pronghorn antelope features the body-shape of a deer with long legs, a short tail and a long snout. In the early 19th century, pronghorn numbered an estimated 35 million in North America. Today, about 700,000 remain, and the majority of them live in Wyoming.
Today, wind machines rip through the air in California, Wyoming, Colorado, Pennsylvania and many other states: their huge 50 yard long blades travel at 179 MPH at the tip and act like a razor on any bird that unsuspectingly flies into their whirling clutches: According to the Associated Press, turbines kill 573,000 birds annually in the USA. Source: www.livescience.com
On the water, our propellers slaughter countless marine life whether it swims, paddles, hunts or just rests in its home environment.
Across our nation with 319 million people and across the globe with 7.2 billion humans, our machines kill countless billions of other creatures 24/7.
When you understand that the United States faces a projected doubling of its population to 625 million within the next 80 years or less, the figures I reported will double the mayhem, slaughter and out right extinction of countless animals. According to the U.S. Department of Interior, Americans kill off 250 species every year, or 2,500 every decade. Extinction: it’s forever.
What kind of a sentient species do we consider ourselves? Moral? Ethical? Religious? Responsible? Principled?
As of 2014, we fail the Natural World at every juncture. We fail our fellow creatures on this planet. In the end, we fail ourselves. Because, at some point, animals’ extinction rates will cripple the natural world. Those extinction rates will cascade into enormous vacancies in the animal kingdom. Finally, as we devour all of Nature's building blocks in our vast web of life, we most likely will hang ourselves on the cosmic gallows in the process.
Solutions: we must gather leaders from our cities, our states and our nation to move toward a concerted “population stabilization” path for the United States and then try to extend it to the rest of the world. We cannot continue on our current endless “slaughter” of the Natural World.