Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Animal spaces, beastly places
An introduction
Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert
Human—animal relations and the new animal geography
Kahuzi Beiga [national park in eastern Congo] was the birthplace of
gorilla tourism and the place where Dian Fossey, the anthropologist and
subject of the film
Gorillas in the Mist,
first encountered the highland
gorilla…. But in the 1990s the park's once healthy population of
gorillas has been severely reduced by poachers and Rwandan rebels, who
use it as a hideout…. Twenty gorillas have been killed since April, and
the days when tourists rubbed shoulders and shook hands with these
magnificent creatures are now long gone…. Basengezi Katintima, the
governor of South Kiva province, where the park is situated, said: 'In
Rwanda they are talking about a human genocide, but here we are
talking about an animal genocide.'
(Gough 1999:13)
Scientists are secretly killing up to nine million laboratory animals a year
because too many are being bred for research, an investigation has
found…. Last year more than 6.5 million mice and around 2,400,000
rats were culled. And more than 1,000 laboratory dogs, an estimated 25
percent, were killed because they were not needed. Most were bred for
testing pharmaceuticals and spent their whole lives in kennels waiting to
be experimented upon. [One anti-vivisectionist] said: 'This waste of life
is totally outrageous…. This is the hidden side of the research
industry.'
(Woolf 1999:6)
Scientists have discovered a startling new source of air pollution: pig
and chicken farms. …They have found that nitrogen emissions from
units for intensively rearing animals are killing woods and forests at the
same rate as the effects of industrial pollution…. The emissions—most
of them from animal farms' growing piles of manure—are causing
