A recent study of beaver dams in northwestern Alaska concludes that the explosive repopulation of Arctic terrain by beavers is thawing large areas of tundra and releasing climate-destroying methane.
The purported negative climate impact of northern beavers regarding methane is the polar opposite of the vaunted benefits of southern beaver populations, which climate scientists have for years claimed sequester vital carbon and rescue humanity from climate change. The dichotomy between the two beaver populations is paralleled by the tensions between animal rights activists’ views of fur trapping.
Is it O.K. to trap animals to save the planet?
The beaver problem in Canada and other northern climes is attributed to anthropomorphic causes – warming temperatures and reduced trapping. Beavers are populating these areas in explosive numbers. The resultant locust-like beaver onslaught has caused even the study’s authors to raise concerns about how to counter the beaver infestation and protect the planet. This posture is reverse-mirrored by earlier laments that beavers were unavailable to save the Earth in North America because of European colonizers who trapped them to obscurity. Trapping, like beavers, appears to be morally climate-binary: It is an “evil” practice against good climate beavers, a “good” practice against bad ones.
Equity and Beaver Fever
If equity is thrown into the mix, climate assessments get muddied into inscrutable darkness. Earlier beaver loss arguments scolded white people. One glowing article titled “How the Eager Beaver Helps Protect the Planet” claimed:
Before the European colonization of North America, there were likely hundreds of millions of beavers. Many Indigenous communities revered them as keepers of water and some had strict policies against killing beavers. But the value of beaver pelts and oil—as fashionable fur hats and perfumes in Europe—lured trappers across the continent and beavers were nearly eliminated from the landscape as a result of heavy exploitation. In the process, our waterscapes became less complex, less resilient, and less able to support diverse plant, animal, and human life.
Now scientists allege that Canadians need lots of trappers ASAP to save the world from pesky beavers and suggest beaver meat will make good human food.
Perhaps the native Canadian tribes whose fur and trapping industry has been thoroughly throttled by progressive animal rights activists will thrive by reducing bad climate beavers. If that solution is pursued, will white people be denied permits to hunt and eat beaver, or is the climate mission paramount? Likewise, does putting a colored person on the moon help the environment (as NASA has proclaimed it will do), or are the jet fuels and other pollution colorblind?
This quandary highlights the unavoidable tension between histrionic social justice initiatives. At times, humanity must choose between competing interests when they are not in accord, such as men’s “rights” to be women versus women’s identity in sports, bathrooms, etc. As the social justice destruction of the world unfolds, social justice warriors fashioning their plans to create a true Utopia will continually run aground on these inconvenient truths. Not all paths to “equity” and world salvation coincide.
Attempting to rewrite history on an oppressor-oppressed narrative fails epically every time. The Cree Indians who depended (and still depend) on fur trapping used the profits to purchase goods from Europeans – apparently, it was bad for Europeans to trap, but good for Natives. This patently racist conclusion eludes social justice warrior awareness because logic is not permitted to eclipse feelings.
The Canadian beaver infestation presents this awkward contrast in bold relief. Shall trapping be encouraged to save the world from beaver methane, or shall the world perish, and all humanity (and beavers) die because crazed animal “rights” advocates lay on the road to stop “inhumane” trapping? These are moral judgments emanating from a morally deluded cadre of agitators whose sole moral compass appears to be identifying something to attack and destroy.
The intersectionality of conflicting ideologies
Food was always the first priority for Native American tribes – periods of famine were common. If cows are to be sacrificed to prevent climate change, society is valuing carbon dioxide levels above food (cows are not an environmental problem: their industrial confinement is). Conflicting demands on resources and disparate outcomes based on resource and policy allocation mean that the social justice rainbow of causes will always be bleeding colors. Every intersectionality of supposed shared oppressions yields parallel divisions.
Many feminists are now outspoken against trans athletes in sports. Sharp critiques by some gay members of transgenderism suggest maybe those QBGLT+ letters do not always accord. Black women claim additional “lived experiences” of oppression beyond the ken of mere white girls. The myriad of unfolding divisions transforms the Utopian Unicorn rainbow into a fractious, confusing kaleidoscope of pronouns, grievances, and mental illness. Americans once rallied around shared challenges rather than splintering divisions.
Would animal rights activists approve of trapping and eating beavers to reduce methane levels in Ontario? Perhaps they would instead relocate captured varmints to midwestern areas, dropped by helicopter into areas suitable for their dams to sequester carbon.
Wild Horses
Activists defending wild horses have created an environmental disaster: the number of feral horses in the United States increased from 17,000 in 1971, when the Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act was enacted, to 225,000 in 2023. Killing them is illegal, but the ecosystem is at risk: what shall be done?
The Sierra Club alleges that wild horses are a problem:
Wild horses are reproducing at unsustainable rates; between 2007 and 2021, their numbers more than tripled. In their search for forage, wild horses are tearing up high-desert vegetation, degrading riparian areas, and trampling fragile native plants. Free-roaming horses and burros are a major cause of the destruction of biocrust—the top layer of desert soils, which has been shown to be an anchor of desert biodiversity.
Every climate conflict raises competing interests. Indeed, climate warriors insist regressive taxes on the poor to finance EVs, solar panels, and heat pumps for the middle class are justified…. to rescue the poor from climate change! Every crisis in social justice fantasy land is manufactured into the leverage of power and government control—even when the government seeds the crisis. The swirling dizziness of all the experts and technocrats saving humanity and Earth from ubiquitous social justice evils has become a senseless, vapid din.
Thus, the beaver trapping conundrum. Is the trapping of animals immoral regardless of the purpose? Does purpose determine ethicality?: Sport versus fur versus food versus saving the planet from imminent existential collapse?
If the world is truly at risk from carbon dioxide, and beaver numbers in the Alaskan wild actually impact such climatic forces, then surely trapping methane-spewing beavers for fun, fur or food will all be welcome -– world-saving! -– pursuits. As for the horses….
