A google alert for “overpopulation” apprises me of current news on the topic. Sadly, about 95% of the articles deal with humans complaining about animal overpopulation.  Most of the articles have to do with dogs and cats who end up killed or homeless, but other articles frequently lament the number of deer, or other birds and mammals. We have failed to heed the warning of Native Americans many years ago who asked us to consider living in harmony with all other life forms. In Japan, they consider dolphins “pests” because they depend on sealife, fish, for their existence. We humans do not need to eat fish, but we want them, and therefore have pitted our selfish desires against the very existence of a species who must rely on the fish. We kill and eat the dolphins, which due to our abuse and negligence of the oceans are now inundated with mercury, thereby endanger little Japanese schoolchildren who are given the mercury-laden fare in school lunch programs. (For more information, see this review of The Cove).  And while we are fighting the dolphins for the fish, we are taking so much that the oceans may be completely depleted of sea life in the very near future. Who is overpopulated? Who is destroying the ecosphere? It would seem like it isn’t the animals, it is the deadly spread of humanity.

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