So something scared you as a child. Do you hold on to that fear and use it throughout your life, “as a barier to knowing and feeling; as an all-purpose defense against claims on conscience”?
Or say an undesirable animal is is on your property; maybe it recently appeared, maybe you inadvertantly invited it and it’s friends to move in, maybe it was there all along for generations.  How do you handle it?  Do you decide to “defend your family” and resort to fear-based cruelty to kill them off?
Are wildlife around your home  a threat that needs to be terminated immediately to protect your livestock and family?

Or is wildlife on your property (city or country) a reminder that we are a part of the natural world, not the owners of it?
Can we re-learn the forgotten art of co-existence?
If there’s not enough space to coexist, shouldn’t we simply (and more safely for all) just move them on to another location where their presence is not problematic?

Is it our ancient inbred fight or flight response that prevents us from seeing wildlife as the wonderous product of millions of years of evolution?
Is killing to assert our property rights the best response, and is it really necessary in this day and age?
Do “property rights” automatically include the right to kill any animal that is encountered on that property? Or do “life rights” have any weight in preventing needless killing based only on cruelty and fear?
Is an overly dramatic reaction to exagerated wildlife fears an valid reason to put up that barier to knowing and feeling; an all-purpose defense against claims on conscience?
We see this dramatic reaction in almost every bat presentation, and many of the audience never allow themselves to overcome it.

We struggle to find ways to reach the perpetrators of this fear-based cruelty.

The quoted text in the first line is from Leonard Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, in his editorial titled “Reduced to Punchlines – The Last Great Death of a Culture”, in which he describes Manifest Destiny’s solution to the “Indian Problem”, and the tragedy of The Trail of Tears. The death of an entire people and culture is an uspeakable tragedy.  Manifest Destiny always included the slaughter of wildlife, either to solve the “problem” of native Americans who depended on it to survive, or to make N. America safe for livestock and families.  Will it be the basis of destroying the world’s wildlife as well?

This policy will become our legacy as we head toward the Sixth Great Extinction.