Re: [deep ecology] solving conflict between species

At 09:02 31/05/99 -0700, you wrote:
> ... I think it can be more than just them or us.
>I read ... about a family of poisonous snakes living near a house 
>and an area where children play. 
> There are several possible ways to resolve this:
>
>Kill 
>Move 
> barrier.
>Wait 
>Move 
>Kill 
>
>There are probably more, ...

**  Under the 'Wait' case, there's another which may work, but I don't know
enough about snakes. I'm thinking of the rattlesnakes in the southern
Laurentian Shield north of where we brought up our first two children.

**  I don't accept (except for Eric Storm's purpose of illustration, i.e.
conflict is a premis of that scenario), that just calling them poisonous is
enough to say that coexistence isn't possible.

**  Say the snakes live in a rock-pile, and that all from 4yo up know
they're there and how dangerous it would be to get too close, including
accidentally treading on one. (I've lived in W.Africa in this situation.)

**  The only concern (in my view) is how to protect both snakes and
unknowing people, specifically young children and visitors, from damage or
death.

**  I'm saying, each group (snakes knowing about people, and people knowing
about snakes) can probably set limitations on themselves to minimise
conflict and/or damage. I don't believe either has total right to the whole
space, though the group that was there first may have some claim to this.

**  I wish I knew more about snakes - still I believe mutual
self-limitation is possible, including having a maximum population.
(specifically: if/when the snakes become too numerous for their normal food
source and 'invade' the village that's been kept free of them by thrown
sticks and stones or a flaring branch, the invader should be killed,
hopefully in a way that the other snakes know what has happened.
Reciprocally, if the cultural limitation on interfering with the snakes is
broken, perhaps under the higher stress of overpopulation, then the damage
or death - perhaps of a child/teen-ager - is as it should be, and no
further action is needed.)

**  I've posted this largely because, for me, it's an example of deep
ecology in action.


**  Separately, on a matter related to what I've said but not to Eric's
point; Maori and European settlers had to try solving this 'sharing space'
conflict in New Zealand prior to 1840, and although things were pretty bad
for the first 60 years, the Treaty of Waitangi signed in that year put
agreed limitations on what each group was free to do: rights and
responsibilities. And my daughter in Switzerland contrasts that highly
self-regulated land with China (where she'd been living on her own for some
months): much less value and importance given to the human environment
(though she _was_ living in the over-populated cities).

David.
(David MacClement) mailto:d1v9d@bigfoot.com 
 http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/index.html#top
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