2013.12.08

This is a very interesting and original contribution from a historian specialised in the history and sociology of the conservation movement.

The urbanization of the eastern gray squirrel in the United States

by Etienne Benson, Journal of American History, December 2013

Prof. Benson retraces the moral and sociological context of the creation of urban parks in the 19th century, and the educational role seen in the interaction between humans and a few wild or semi-wild species introduced in these parks.

“By the mid-19th century, squirrels had been eradicated from cities. In order to end up with squirrels in the middle of cities, you had to transform the urban landscape by planting trees and building parks and changing the way that people behave. People had to stop shooting squirrels and start feeding them.”

The presence of squirrels in cities at this time “started getting tied up with the parks movement led by Frederick Law Olmstead. It was related to the idea that you want to have things of beauty in the city, but it was also part of a much broader ideology that says that nature in the city is essential to maintaining people’s health and sanity, and to providing leisure opportunities for workers who cannot travel outside the city.”

Benson also found signs in his research that squirrels played another important role for city residents, particularly children: as moral educators. “Feeding squirrels becomes adopted as a way of encouraging humane behavior,” Benson said. He found several sources, from children’s literature to writings of Ernest Thompson Seton, the cofounder of the Boy Scouts, that indicated that feeding squirrels was seen as a way to teach children how to be kind, both to human and nonhuman animals, and “cure them of their tendency toward cruelty.”

Though people also fed other urban animals, such as pigeons, at the time, Benson suspected that squirrels might have occupied a unique position, perhaps in part because humans connect more easily with mammals: “Squirrels’ readiness to trust humans and their ability to flourish in the heart of the city seemed to make them living proof of the rewards of extending charity and community beyond the bounds of humanity.”

By the first couple of decades of the 20th century, some of the rosy glow toward squirrels had faded, Benson noted. Booming populations began to annoy some city residents, as the animals took up residence in attics, bit people trying to feed them, dug up gardens and scared away songbirds from feeders.

When the environmental movement took hold in the 1960s and 1970s, it was basically a wilderness movement, with a dichotomous perception of humans and nature interactions. Animals in the urban environment, including squirrels, were no longer widely seen as morally significant members of the community. Ideas of letting them live out life “as nature intended”, in other words disconnected of any interaction with humans, took a stronger hold.

As Benson notes, “There is a shift at the end of the 20th century, where it becomes almost a crime or a sin to feed animals, which is entirely the opposite of where it was earlier.”

As argued in another post (“From Dubos to the 21st century: Reconciling conflicting perspectives for biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene — Kueffer and Kaiser-Bunbury 2013“), this fundamentalist ecology, or wilderness movement, has hit the wall. It’s psychologically counter-productive, and it’s become irrelevant since there’s practically no more wilderness left anywhere.

Accordingly, it’s due time for a return to a more integrative, less agressive and less dichotomous approach of humans-nature relations, it’s due time for a return to a moral and more gentle attitude towards fellow animals in the wild.

And as long as you don’t feed them junk food (a long shot in the present industrial food society!), and as long as you know what is good or bad to different species, feeding animals in the wild should be encouraged and practiced rather than discouraged: without personal interaction, there’s disconnection, and the most intense, most basic interactions are based on food! If you understand what an animal eats, you start getting closer to it. And when getting closer, you may touch it, thus getting a better feel of it, and getting rid of unfounded fears – establishing a bond, in other words.

Time for deeper bonds with fellow animals, time for a shift!

Dr Gabriel Bittar, Kangaroo Island