NEWWESTERNERS: INTERVIEW with BOB 'ACTION' JACKSON, PART III

In Animal Kingdom, Are Bison Equal In ‘Value’ To Humans?

By Todd Wilkinson, 9-21-07

	Former Yellowstone backcountry ranger Bob 'Action' Jackson navigates the tallgrass at his Iowa bison ranch and the prickly questions surrounding whether animals possess the same kind of emotions as humans.

In the big picture of earthly existence, are the lives of bison and other animals equal in value to humans? Bob Jackson doesn't think of himself as an animal rights activist, nor as a philosopher nor an intellectual who is immune to personal hypocrisy. In fact, he admits in plainspoken, opinionated, homespun English that at times his command of proper grammar is sorely lacking. But he is no Neanderthal. As a consumer and capitalist, he raises bison for sale to provide meat on the dinner table for hundreds of human families who are his customers.

Nonetheless, he relates to bison as sentient creatures that possess their own range of emotions and sense of belonging to one another. Is there a contradiction here? This kind of paradox in Jackson has not only attracted responses of incredulity from members of the scientific community, who have pegged him with a "Dr. Doolittle" label, but it has left Jackson staking out contentious terrain, for it challenges our own value system. In this, the third part of NewWest.Net's continuing conversation with 'Action' Jackson, the topic moves from a discussion of Bison Culture to the relationship humans have with bison and other species. --Todd Wilkinson

Read part one of the conversation here.
Read part two here.

NEWWEST.NET: Bob, what do you say to people who accuse you of reading your own human emotions and perspective into what you're witnessing with bison herds? Wildlife biologists say that you're speculating with conjecture and staking out a subjective position rather than an objective one that is based on the gathering of peer-reviewed empirical evidence. And some in the religious community argue that equating the value of humans to animals is heresy. If you want your paradigm shift to be taken seriously by public land managers and private property owners, how do you prove what your gut is telling you?

BOB JACKSON: How many times have you heard people say: "Hey, those animals are behaving and playing just like us?" If humans looked at life from a perspective of trying to relate to animals, then we’d have a better understanding of why science categorizes us as part of the animal kingdom. But to do so means pondering equality with other species, something most humans can’t consider.

To my knowledge, anthropomorphize means “to attribute human form or personality to things not human”. But there is no opposite term in Webster’s Dictionary. If there is, I have never heard it used in scientific circles. Without the opposite view being presented or identified, I have to attribute the origins of the term, anthropomorphism, to the bias of superiority humans assert over everything else in the world.

Scholastically, I grew up with the teachings that there are “lower” and “higher" forms of life. Science delineated and assigned these different levels and yet the survival of higher life forms depends on the organisms considered of lesser value or relevance.

Superiority is a “Catch-22” in the biological science world. We assign life judged against our own, but this bias keeps us from actually seeing what life is. Anthropomorphism, and its resulting sense of superiority, doesn’t stop at animal vs. human comparisons. To conquer and kill, people have to justify their actions. Thus we get the words “sub humans”, savages, slaves, Aryan Race and Holocaust.

More subtle and insidious is what this attitude creates when we manage, domesticate or control other living things. In my farming community, I hear of farm kids throwing young pigs against the walls for “fun”. In Yellowstone, on various occasions I have had to stop park horse operations employees from kicking my horse’s groins, smashing a horse’s head against trees, and repeatedly ripping out flesh from a horse’s back with the claw end of shoeing hammers.

	Can a parallel be drawn between the auction sale of livestock and people? Bob Jackson draws the analogy but it has left him alienated from other livestock producers.

I have seen biologists and vets throw pieces of the bison calves they had just killed and dissected, at the mothers who were inching too close. To these people, all their actions were justified. But would these same biologists throw human baby parts at human mothers to keep them away?

Superiority of race or species is needed to justify abuse, whether it is war against people or treatment of animals. Thus, we get a bit closer as to why “anthropo” is such as dirty word in behavioral science circles. The word is merely an extension of who we are and our prejudices.

Yet our prejudices persist and scientists continue on with the same bias because to admit otherwise invalidates everything they did and believed before. In biological sciences I see no attitude of a “brother’s keeper”. The fact that the very people who study and “manage” animals, are prone to abuse them without even knowing why, says why we as a “modern” civilization, will not learn from other animals.

Those indigenous peoples who believed in equality of all life, were not totally immune to this superiority either. There are numerous historical accounts of camp dogs, the animals they used to pack gear, being beaten by their “masters”. The more control, the bigger the problem. The industrialized world we live in assumes a lot of control over others on this planet.

In my life as a ranger, I lived with, traveled and packed horses 60,000 to 70,000 miles. I had to redefine my relationship with them as a brother’s keeper. Otherwise, it would have eaten me up emotionally and turned me into a lesser person. It also was essential for my own safety.

To have the attitude that I needed to teach my horses "manners” or to be its “master” or “boss” meant they could not help me. They needed to act independent of my “commands” when they recognized a danger before me, whether it was a grizzly or poacher. I never got hurt by a horse or sored my stock for the 30 years I rode the mountains. I was proud of this accomplishment but it wasn’t because of diligence or technique. Rather it was because of my attitude toward that animal.

Likewise, science can learn a lot about animals if those studying animals “adjust” their view of life. Life has emotion whether we are human or “higher” or “lower” forms of that life. I believe this and wouldn’t care if anyone else did if it wasn’t for what humans adversely do to animals.

	With humans asserting their own place at the top of the animal kingdom pyramid, does that make us "superior" to bison? Jackson questions the rationale. Here, Yellowstone bison roam the Hayden Valley at sundown. Photo by Jeff Henry.

Science thinks of “peer review” so I guess this has to be “proved”. Proof is in results. I can take anyone to Yellowstone’s Hayden Valley during the rut and accurately narrate, in a non stop manner, as much as any“expert” I know or read about of what herds or individuals in that herd are going to do next. Emotion in those herds is the key to asking questions and receiving answers and the emotions in those animals are exactly the same as what humans have.

I’d like to see any recognized “authority” who does not believe this watch a herd and not only PREDICT, but then continue on and say WHY each individual is going to act and move the way they do within that herd. They couldn’t predict it even one percent of the time unless they acknowledged emotion. All one would get is the standard “pecking order” answers because that is all they would see. Without this needed knowledge there is no way they can assess the uniqueness of herds or take action to preserve those herds.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Todd Wilkinson's conversation with Bob Jackson. Next time: Jackson wrestles with the question: "What does recovery of the American bison look like and what is necessary for it succeed?"

Read part one here.
Read part two here.

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