When animal homelessness is a death sentence whose fault is it?
When an animal is without a place to forage and house it is often a death sentence. No one wants to find fault but often and historically when trying to address the issue people often place blame. So who’s fault is it when an animal is without home or commons?
Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds (source)
The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common but lets the greater villain loose who steals the common from the goose.
There is an answer.
All through history of Earth, all animals who have needed shelter have built shelter.
When a bird needs a nest it builds it, when a fox needs a den it builds one, when a beaver needs a home it builds one. When a polar bear needs a home it digs out a den.
Any creature in nature, when it needs a home it builds one.
Why do animals need homes?
It needs safety. It needs it warmth. It needs storage. And its offspring need those same things. See Nature Preserves.
What about people? Do they build homes?
In the show Naked and Afraid, the first thing survivalists do is build a shelter or home. It’s a basic need necessary for survival.
Why? Because it’s unsafe to be without shelter.
However, all over the world, animals who need housing are blocked from building it. They give all sort of reasons for doing this. It doesn’t matter the reason. It doesn’t matter. It’s not natural. It’s oppressive.
The answer, you will see, is not complicated.
So if an animal wanted and needed housing and then the people blocked them from building a home by their own hands or through a community effort then it is not the animals who are at fault for homelessness it is the people.
If an animal is blocked from building a home by the state it is the states fault.
Because the animal that wants to build a home and is not allowed has made an attempt to build a home like every other creature on Earth does all through history.
But let’s say you give and animal access to the Earth as in trees for wood and access to clay and access to natural resources and then they do not build a home then it would be their fault.
If an animal has access to all the natural resources they need and then they do nothing with that and choose not to then you could say it’s their fault.
If an animal is not blocked from resources and space to build a home and then choose not to do it then it is the animals fault.
What are the Commons?
Animals have always had access to nature. It is only humans that block and prevent other creatures from allowing animals access to nature. This happened through what is known as the enclosure movement that happened around 800–400 years ago and spread along with human colonialism.
After the enclosure movement animals were blocked from the commons (from land and natural resources held in common). Being blocked from the commons has forced them to migrate or starve to death. And they do starve to death. We are in what many say is the 6th mass extinction event.
Here’s what happened to humans during the enclosure movement:
You could say that we are living in a world where an animals survival is dependent on if they have some small patch of nature to find food AND have a safe home/den/hole/nest or they are taken in and or fed by humans or the left over food waste in garbage cans that are often sealed off. Humans waste 40% of the food that the Earth the grows.
Animals didn’t choose this life. They didn’t choose to face starvation or be without shelter. Humans created a world a world where if animals aren’t intentionally fed, if animals aren’t given nature preserves they die.
Not having food is not only unhealthy it can hurt.
People and animals that don’t get enough food have what are called hunger pangs. You don’t get used to it. Although, if you fast or go without food for more than a day or so it sometimes subsides for brief amounts of time. You can try fasting and see how it feels but going prolonged amounts of time without food can cause permanent organ damage.
Not having food reduces animals energy and that reduces their ability to find food or safe places.
Aside: What are psychopaths? These are humans who have impaired empathy. They lack compassion. They can’t feel the harm that they create. They usually hear about painful situations and suffering and don’t feel or don’t do anything. They are indifferent. They may have been born that way or have become that way.
We should value all life and treat everyone with respect no matter what issues but historically when people that are complacent, indifferent or sociopathic and when they are in positions of power or where they make decisions for others (especially when those decisions have no consequences to them) massive amounts of pain, suffering and damage to people and nature have occurred.
While the world of nature looks like it is eat or be eaten this is not the case everywhere and it’s not how it has to be.
Humans have some positive symbiotic relationships with plants and some animals.
Animals that have been domesticated and housed are often as much or more beneficial than some human to human relationships.
To dispossess animals from nature is oppressive, harmful and unfair. A moderately intelligent society would not do this and has not done this. It’s only in recent years that humans have become so self centered many have failed to see the damage on nature.
This blocking animals of natural resources is called siege warfare and it is done all over the world.
Siege warfare is blocking animals from basic necessities like water, plants and other animals to make room for human cities and infrastructure.
Siege warfare is illegal under international law and usually related to collective punishment.
Animals would build a home if they could but they are blocked by human infrastructure and artificial borders.
There are religious reasons that support this. And some people need religious reasons because they can’t put themselves in another persons perspective.
Even Jesus, a martyr of the Christian faith, supported animals building their own homes. He said, “Birds have nests and foxes have dens…” (source)
Well, Jesus, I have some news for you…
He said, “When you build a house...” (source)
Does that include allowing animals to build homes Jesus?
It doesn’t matter that there’s some small patch of Earth out there somewhere that animals. That’s not enough. It’s inadequate.
I understand that if we feed them then that it may domesticate them but people are putting bird feeders in their yards now and animals are living off of crumbs from outdoor restaurants no where they were displaced from.
We have, collectively as humans, reconstructed the land and territory that wild life has used for all of time.
In a way, we’ve dispossessed the wild life of some or much of their natural habitat. Displacing them from their natural habitat has forced them to find food in people concentrated areas. Humans have displaced them from nature but at the same time they haven’t compensated them for that.
You might say if we feed them then they would be codependent and depend on that food supply.
Since we’ve possessed the land where their food source is then giving them what was taken from them is the least that we can do.
How is it different than if you owned a farm and then someone came along, acquired it by force and then said, “We can’t feed you because then you’ll become dependent.”
“Wait dude, you just took my food supply! We need that! You’re actions are starving me and causing my homelessness.”
And when someone says we can’t allow animals to be codependent does that include humans? Humans are codependent on each other.
Someone farms, someone delivers, someone prepares, someone accounts, someone teaches, someone learns, etc.
We depend on all of those links in the food supply chain for humans to survive.
Did you know that trees and some plants communicate and share natural resources through their root system?
Having contiguous blocks of nature where plants can communicate and thrive and animals can forage and migrate is healthy not only for them but for humans.
It has been discovered that forest gardens create a better ecosystem than single plant monoculture.
Mystical stuff or basic stuff
What is your place on Earth?
When a mother animal gives birth to a litter those are her offspring. She is responsible for feeding and nursing them. She nurtures them and protects them and feeds them.
In a similar way, animals are offspring of Earth. The Earth produces food that feeds animals.
Many people believe all life is valuable. And a mature person would respect nature.
Some say, animals have as much right to build a house as you do.
I saw a bumper sticker that said,
The Earth doesn’t belong to you, you belong to it.
I was listening to a science podcast at the time and scientifically, gravitationally that’s true. Earth has the higher mass and gravity than the creatures on it.
In other words, space ships leave Earth’s gravitational effects. Earth doesn’t leave the space ship.
To put it another way, the Solar System doesn’t belong to the Earth. The Earth belongs to the Solar System.
In a way I agree with the quote, “The Earth doesn’t belong to humans, humans belong to it.”
What does that mean? To me, it means it has more power and more authority and more responsibility than you. It is responsible for feeding its offspring and produces an abundance of natural resources for its offspring. I wouldn’t want to be someone that prevents animals from doing that.
Animals and plants are in a way it’s offspring.
Both science and religion have said a few similar things:
“All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.” — Ecclesiastes 3:20
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are stardust.” ― Carl Sagan
We’re not better than animals. We’re not worthless or worthmore but bees are more important than humans.
Another way to look at it is that the wild life didn’t have any choice in the matter.
I don’t remember a council of humans and wildlife assembling and people asking wildlife if it’s ok for people to build their homes and buildings and roads through the area where they’ve lived and hunted and gathered for years. But maybe I missed it!
Animals have been dispossessed of everything the Earth provides for them to survive by humans. They have been displaced from where they’ve lived. And they are currently being blocked from nature (food and housing and thus safety) by fences, by roads, by human infrastructure, by human housing by human development, by manufactured restructuring of nature and the plants and life that existed before humans arrived.
And they haven’t been compensated for everything that was taken and that they need now.
Humans are less important than bees.
Why is this so important?
In the Bible, Jesus healed, forgave and educated everyone but he told one story about poverty and homelessness. This is one of the few times he mentioned something so harmful.
Why was realizing the damages for allowing poverty, homelessness and hunger so important?
Because homelessness is a level of trauma beyond pain and suffering.
Some soldiers who go to war and see the most horrific side of it come home with a condition called PTSD. It ruins peoples lives. It’s trauma after the trauma.
Medically and psychologically professionals have explicitly stated the same effect happens to the homeless. Being homelessness is the same as seeing or being apart of the atrocities of war.
But we should ignore animals and their few basic needs?
What is shifting responsibility, deflecting or blame shifting?
One of the most common things that happen when talking to people about animal homelessness is the amount of deflecting that goes on.
In some conversations when you tell people about the situation and they will shift responsibility from society to the animal.
“That’s not my problem!”
It’s not specifically your problem. It’s a human negligence problem. It’s a side of effect the way humans are.
Here’s what you can do. Simply acknowledging that there is a problem is a powerful and kind thing you can do.
You can say, “I don’t know how to fix this problem but I’ll be supportive of those that are working on it. I won’t get in the way of those working on it. I’ll email or call up my local representatives and make them aware of the problem so they can figure out ways to fix it and respect that we share the world with animals and the rest of nature.”
It’s usually cities that run a Parks and Recreation department. There’s also the Bureau of Land Management that manages public land.
Or something like that. You’re creative. I believe in you.
If an animal needed a home it would build one. But since we live in a society that has displace and dispossessed animals and plants of their natural habitat allow it is humans that are responsible for feeding and housing them and responsible for the death and damage of them not being housed.
Humans are responsible for feeding and housing animals where they have taken, restructured or are blocking animals from nature. It’s not the animals fault.
There is no scarcity of resources. More than 40% of food is wasted everyday. There is 640 million acres of public land and hundreds of millions of private land.
Animal homelessness and hunger is a symptom and evidence of a broken and flawed society and way of life.
Housing and food is an immediate, time sensitive need. It is an emergency situation.
I saw this related online:
A demon will treat animals in a demons way
An angel will treat animals in an angels way
A kind person will treat animals kindly
A horrible person will treat animals horribly
It is never because of who animals are
It’s because of who they are
How others treat animals represents how they are
And no name tags can fully describe an animal
Additional Comments
In one sense it’s no ones fault.
One event lead to another event and one situation leads to another situation and now we are all here at this time in history with some things working and somethings broken.
So rather than place the blame we should fix the problem.
There are plenty of ways to do that. Some are simple and some we need to spend some time on to get right for future generations.
