Confronting our relational poverty by embracing our relationship with other animals

In our self-induced, frenetically busy modern world, our relationships with wild animals have deteriorated. Our contemporary relationships take many forms, both positive and negative, but regretfully, the overall human... [ view full abstract ]

In our self-induced, frenetically busy modern world, our relationships with wild animals have deteriorated. Our contemporary relationships take many forms, both positive and negative, but regretfully, the overall human relationship with wild animals is overwhelmingly negative. However, in our exploration of human-animal connections we find that people are searching to create justice beyond humans, want to protect animal-others from harm, and desire the presence of wild animals on Earth with us. A gap in knowledge, however, is the realization that wild animals actually need quite simple acts of kindness from us, to have their homes back, unspoiled, and to be left alone. We will discuss ways to work with humanity to garner the respect and admiration that wild animals need and deserve from us. We will question our thoughts about human rights to natural resources and where they emanate from and how to better determine what the rights of other animals are and how we must accommodate them. We will discuss our current state of relational poverty in terms of our lack of ability to have healthy relationships with wild animals and share our work in rethinking human relationships with wild animals.