“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

Like many Alaskans, I was disgusted and disheartened to learn that two “sport hunters” recently killed an adolescent brown bear near the Sterling Highway, a bear that several other people had been watching and photographing. How much sport is involved in killing a young and habituated bear that is clearly tolerant of people? What did the hunters hope to gain from their kill? Not meat. And not even a trophy, given the bear’s age and small size. A small bearskin rug? Bragging rights? The thrill of the kill? What? Yet that unsportsmanlike behavior pales in comparison to other disturbing stories and images that have passed my way in recent days, recounting various atrocities suffered by animals at the hands – or in some cases, feet – of humans.

I realize that humans do terrible things to other life forms – and each other – all the time. But sometimes that awful knowledge becomes a more visceral awareness, a deep-felt sense of horror that we are capable of such cruelties. Or perhaps even worse, that we as a people, a species, a state and nation, allow certain despicable behaviors to occur because we benefit in some way and it is easier to do nothing than to demand change.

For several days I’ve become increasingly haunted by our species’ callousness to suffering and wondering what I can do to make a difference. This is one small attempt. Perhaps, over time, I’ll do more.

Some might ask why I worry so much about animals, when there is human suffering to address. I have no good answer except to say that I believe it’s easier for us to ignore or rationalize the brutal treatment of animals. And, as Gandhi noted, the way a nation or person treats animals says much about a nation or individual’s character, morality.

My haunting began with an email, forwarded by a friend who lives overseas. The subject line: “Please, please sign this petition and forward . You don't have to view the video!”

I should issue a warning here, that the description which follows is graphic and disturbing and those especially sensitive to the abuse and torture of animals may wish to skip the next few paragraphs.

The email went on to explain “With a hidden camera, animals were filmed being SKINNED ALIVE!!! They say it’s done to get a more perfect ‘cut.’ Afterwards the carcasses are tossed into a pile, still alive, and for up to 10 minutes you can see their hearts still beating, in agony, their eyes still blinking, and the puppies little paws still shaking. There was one [fox] pup that still lifted his head [after being skinned] and gazed at the camera with bloodied eyes. If you don’t care to see the video, please sign and forward to your friends: this monstrosity has to be stopped, we have to act!! . . . Do not click on the link, you have been warned that it is too gruesome to watch and something needs to be done to stop it . . . Thanks for your support.”

Next, with special emphasis, “THERE IS NO NEED TO SEE THE VIDEO, BUT IF YOU MUST, BE AWARE, IT’S HORRIBLE. THE FOLLOWING VIDEO IS OF EXCRUCIATING VIOLENCE.” And then some final words: “If we don’t protect animals from this type of brutality, we become accomplices.”

To be honest, I didn’t know what to do. I’ve received lots of “please sign this petition and forward” emails over the years and I’ve generally steered away from them (in fact I’ve now been told by another friend that only website petitions are considered valid; emailed petitions like the one I received aren’t considered legitimate because they are unmanaged and can multiply exponentially). I also wondered if the cause itself was real. With some hesitation I clicked on the link and was taken to the website run by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

I know, I know, PETA is one of the groups that many (and perhaps most) Alaskans love to hate and mock, largely because of its long and outspoken opposition to the Iditarod and more recently to fishing. But bear with me on this.

In horrific detail, the page revealed “A Shocking Look Inside Chinese Fur Farms.” I read much of the text, which included background. And then I watched the video. Or part of it. The images of a fox-like animal being smashed to the ground and then skinned while still writhing in pain will stay with me a long, long time. But even worse was the still-alert face of a bloodied, skinned, suffering animal. The video went on, but I clicked off as one of the farm workers grabbed another of the animals, unable to take any more. The horror was deepened by the soundtrack, not so much because of the animals’ cries, but the calm chatter of humans simply doing their business. It was another routine day at the farm, which made it all the worse.

The website makes one other point: China supplies more than half of the finished fur clothing imported to the U.S. Even if a garment’s label says it was made in Europe, the animals may have been raised and slaughtered on a Chinese fur farm.

* * *
There’s been more awful stuff, though nothing so vividly and viscerally upsetting. In reading about the Supreme Court’s consideration of a law aimed at animal cruelty videos, I have learned there is such a thing as a “crush video” in which women, often wearing high heels, step upon and slowly crush small animals, for instance mice and guinea pigs and kittens, apparently for the sexual gratification of perverse people who watch and enjoy such things. I don’t want to know anything more, except that such crush videos will remain outlawed. (At least I hope so; it will be some time before any verdict is rendered.)

And then there is our nation’s factory farm system. I first got an inside look at America’s modern factory farming in “Orion” magazine and then in Michael Pollan’s powerfully provocative book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” It is, in a word, disgusting. This assembly-line approach to the manufacture of food is – or should be – one of our country’s great contemporary shames. It’s a system dominated by large industrial plants called CAFOs, short for concentrated animal feeding operations. Before being slaughtered for human food, the animals kept in these CAFOs – most notably chickens, cattle, and pigs – lead short, horrible lives, in which they eat unnatural foods, are kept in small, confined spaces, and often are caked in their own feces.

This past week, I took my continuing education on factory farming to a new level, by watching the documentary “Food, Inc.” shown at Bear Tooth as part of its Alaska Local Food Film Festival. With Pollan and Eric Schlosser (“Fast Food Nation”) as its chief narrators/experts, the film takes a hard and close look at industrial farming, whose operations remain largely hidden from the public eye, so that we won’t be quite so aware how “both workers and animals are being abused.”

Despite the corporate effort to keep things hidden, the film’s producers managed to get some vividly disturbing images of the lives that factory farmed chickens and cattle and pigs endure. Imagine chickens so closely packed they can barely move, some of them lying – and dying – in their own filth, because their bones and internal organs can’t keep up with their rapid and genetically engineered growth from chick to adult, so they sometimes flop over and are unable to rise. Imagine them packed into suffocatingly hot buildings in which they never see sunlight. And imagine cows that have to stand ankle deep in their own manure all day long, eventually sent to slaughterhouses caked in manure. There’s more, but you get the picture.

“Food, Inc.” should be required watching for all Americans, especially those hooked on junk food, just as Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” should be required reading.

In some ways the reality of America’s factory farm raised chickens and cows and pigs is even more reprehensible than those of animals raised and killed at China’s fur farms, because we are all complicit in their horrible lives. Our increasing addiction to junk food and our willingness to turn away and plead ignorance of these travesties allows them to continue.

The good news is that the work of journalists like Pollan and Schlosser and producers of documentaries like “Food, Inc.” have begun to turn the tide, if only slightly. A growing number of people are eating in healthier ways, me among them, often by turning to locally grown foods when possible. By all accounts, Anchorage’s farmer’s markets are drawing ever-larger crowds as people change their eating habits. Of course the growing season here is short, but it makes some difference. Those of us who can’t completely give up on meat now also have the choice of organic, free-range chickens and free ranging, grass-fed beef that are antibiotic free. Or, even better, wild fish and game. Still, factory farming remains a huge and politically powerful business, and that remains a national shame.

* * *

Finally, I come to a local horror: Alaska’s state-sanctioned and managed aerial slaughter of wolves, so that human hunters can have more moose and caribou to kill.

I recently got to look at a bunch of images that document wolf-kill efforts in what is called the Upper Yukon-Tanana Wolf Control Area. The photographs were released by the Department of Fish and Game to a local environmental group, but they remain unpublished because the state insists the photos are copyright protected and “may not be used without expressed, written permission from the department, and may not be used for commercial or political purposes.”

To be honest, photos of dead wolves are not nearly as awful to view as a video that shows the horrors of a Chinese fur farm. But they are haunting in their own way. Several pictures show the faces of wolves caked in frozen blood that has pooled in nose or mouth and been splattered on fur. Their faces are contorted in what I can only describe as a death grimace. Skinned carcasses appear to show numerous gunshot wounds, which suggests some of the animals had to be shot multiple times before dying. Other photos show the frozen bodies of dead wolves thrown into a pile; dead wolves being skinned; dead wolves being hauled in helicopter sling loads; dead wolves being held, like trophies, by participants in the kill (whether state employees or citizen volunteers isn’t clear); airplanes in flight; what appears to be wolf kills of a moose and caribou; and wolf tracks across a snowy landscape.

Most haunting to me is what this group of photos suggests. The wolves were tracked and then hunted from the air. Almost certainly, some or all were driven to exhaustion before they were finally “put down” for good. It’s likely some traveled considerable distances while panicked, and perhaps wounded, in a desperate, terrifying chase.

The state gives us wolf (and now bear) kill numbers that are bloodless and easy to digest, and it tells us how effective and efficient this predator control effort is. It doesn’t give the full picture, the horrific reality of the chase and kill, the suffering that occurs. Some will say there’s no need to feel sorry for wolves, because of their own savagery. But which is worse, really: to be savage in survival or to be so simply because wolves are our competitors and therefore Alaska’s wildlife managers and many of its politicians have decided wolves need to be hunted down and killed so that more moose and caribou are available for human hunters, many of them urban residents and some from outside the state, here to bag trophies.

It is a regressive, awful and brutal style of managing wildlife. And it reflects poorly on the “moral progress” of Alaskans, who allow such barbaric practices to continue.

We are a strange species, capable of so much good and so much horror. And that continues to haunt me.