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6. THE FINAL CURTAIN

"The highest wisdom has but one science - the science of the whole –
the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it."

~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace ~

In September 1988, four animal rights campaigners were found guilty at Lancaster Crown Court of what was described as "a totally irresponsible plot" to liberate Rocky, the solitary captive of Morcambe Marineland. The four, who expressed a wish to release Rocky into the sea as "an act of mercy", had been observed running away from the dolphinarium in the dead of night. They were later apprehended by police, and were found to be in possession of a large net, ropes and a home-made stretcher. The two alleged ringleaders of the plot were sentenced to six months' imprisonment suspended for two years and fined 500 pounds each. The judge concluded that Rocky had given pleasure to countless people without any apparent harm to himself and was clearly treated and trained with affection and kindness. Notwithstanding the dubious moral lecture by Her Honour and the fact that the penalties meted-out to the defendants were harsher than those imposed upon traffickers in wildlife, the scheme to free the dolphin was undoubtedly ill-planned and ill-conceived.

Over the years, there have been several other attempts to release dolphins into the wild, some spontaneous, some planned, but few that were professionally organized. Rather conveniently, this has enabled the dolphin entertainment industry to portray the rehabilitation of captive cetaceans as unachievable and little more than a naive pipe dream of 'idealists' and 'bleeding hearts'. "From time to time," declares Prof. Paul Schauenberger, "sensitive, sentimental individuals and groups worry about the fate of dolphins in captivity and utter the wish to give these intelligent mammals their freedom back. This is easier said than done. One should be aware of the fact that this can, under certain circumstances, be a crime, to send a dolphin back into the open sea. It is extraordinarily difficult, sometimes even impossible, to get a trained bottlenose used again to a life in freedom. . . Dolphins that lost their way during exercises with the U.S. Navy or dolphins that were freed illegally by goodwilled but unknowledgeable people met a terrible death in the sea, in complete freedom." Schauenberger provides no evidence for this claim, though certainly some dolphins released from captivity through ill-conceived schemes have perished upon their return to the wild. Yet as Doug Cartlidge points out with respect to his planned release of Bruno Lienhardt's dolphins Leo and Nemo, "it is not just a matter of dumping them in the sea. They will first of all have to gather their strength to fight infection and learn how to fend for themselves. It will be a gradual, carefully-planned process." Nor would the release even be precedent-setting, Cartlidge insists: "Successful dolphin rehabilitation has been achieved on several occasions, most notably in 1987 in America when two Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, Joe and Rosie, were released by ORCA, the Oceanic Research and Communication Alliance."

These were the first dolphins ever to be released with the sanction and blessing of the U.S. government, and their successful return to the wild proved even more remarkable since the animals had already been languishing in captivity for seven years, caught in 1980 for "communication research" by none other than Dr. John Lilly and his Human Dolphin Foundation. Veteran dolphin handler Ric O'Barry - who caught and trained 'Flipper', the star of the 1960's television show, and who defected from the captive dolphin industry after Flipper's death in 1969 - was hired to "untrain" the animals. He began by feeding them live fish, and instead of rewarding the dolphins when they performed, he would turn his back on them, effectively reversing the normal training programme. At the same time a sighting network was established, designed to keep track of the two dolphins and monitor their interactions with local dolphin schools following their release. In June 1987, Joe and Rosie were introduced into the Wassaw National Wildlife Refuge on the Georgia coast. A specially designed free-floating, portable holding pen was constructed for their gradual readaption to the natural environment. From the safety of the pen, the two dolphins could learn to catch their own fish, come into contact with wild dolphins, and reacquaint themselves with the ocean's myriad influences, sounds and rhythms. When Joe and Rosie began playing games with pieces of marsh grass which floated in their enclosure, the ORCA team knew that the time had come to let the dolphins go. "That was a good sign," Project director Virginia Coyle declared later, "indicating they felt happy and comfortable" in their new habitat. Thus on 13 July 1987, the gate was opened, giving Joe and Rosie their first opportunity to return to freedom. After three quick trips in and out of the pen, ORCA reported, the pair swam towards a tidal creek about 3 kilometres from the release site, defying industry predictions that the dolphins would be loathe to leave behind them the comforts and security of captivity. Over the following weeks and months they were observed on several occasions, easily distinguished from their wild companions by the freeze brands on their dorsal fins. Rosie was spotted twice swimming with a local dolphin school, feeding near shrimp boats; Joe was observed surfing off a nearby beach, and later the pair were seen together again near fishing boats. As an exultant Virginia Coyle stated: "The result of such an effort could have far-reaching effects on both humans and dolphins. . . a catalyst for other humans and dolphins who seek the benefits of an open-gate relationship."

The dolphins Rocky, Missy and Silver during rehabilitation in the Caribbean Turks & Caicos Islands, prior to their release back into the wild in 1991.

No one knows why, but almost every day for more than twenty years now, along a stretch of coral sands known as Monkey Mia in Western Australia, a local dolphin school has chosen to come into voluntary contact with human beings. It is, says Australia's cetacean protection organisation Project Jonah, "a dolphin lovers' paradise - there are no rules other than obvious self-imposed restraints necessary to maintain the friendship." There is also no technology, no feeding expenses, drugs or vitamins, no entrance fee, no compere and mindless spiel, no money-grabbing impresario, and above all, no walls. With public pressure continually mounting on the captive dolphin industry, it is perhaps conceivable that one day Monkey Mia will be looked upon as the prototype of the "dolphinarium" of the future, open sanctuaries where wild cetacea will voluntarily interact with human beings, genuinely fulfilling the callings of both education and science. As Prof. Giorgio Pilleri points out, "the only solution" to the present dilemma "is to establish reserves or large open-air parks for the dolphins. Although this would complicate research, the results would be far more rewarding."

The Latest Show On Earth

As for the circus menagerie, it has been said that more stringent laws in the future, coupled with a chronic scarcity of some exotic species, may eventually spell its extinction. But according to Dr. Fred Kurt, it is precisely because circuses are facing this shortage that their existing animals are being made to suffer. Fearing an end to their supplies, he says, some circuses are literally working their animals to death. "Circus Krone in Germany, for instance, now has only old Asian elephants and all of them have open tuberculosis. This is because when circuses like Krone visit big cities such as Brussels or Berlin, the stables are often in small damp cellars where there is bad air, cold floors and no natural light." Kept under such conditions, elephants may also be afflicted by lameness of the trunk. "Because of the coldness of the stables and the permanent beatings," explains Kurt, "many elephants in Italian circuses can't even drink and eat with their trunks any more, or even lift them - they have to kneel down and be fed like a cow. And still these animals are used and re-used for animal shows."

Paradoxically, such desperate abuse may also represent the death-rattle of the circus menagerie and the 'tradition' of the performing wild animal under the big top. Indeed, as an institution, the circus is already facing traumatic times, and having expended so much of its imagination and ingenuity on defending the menagerie by systematically deceiving the public, it appears that it has precious little left in reserve to help combat its inexorable decline. Says Kurt: "Almost every circus in the world - including such renowned ones as Knie - are now fighting for their survival. But they have no new ideas and no inspiration, only gimmicks and meagre variations of the traditional animal acts. They still don't realise that the end is already in sight for the performing wild animal in the circus. By means of television alone, people are beginning to understand the way in which these animals behave in the wild, and within ten or twenty years public opinion just won't tolerate the idea of them being trained to perform unnatural tricks in the ring." David Hancocks, director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, agrees: "The true image of wildlife is seriously and deliberately distorted in the circus. It is inevitable that eventually this will cause their downfall, as the groundswell of knowledge about ecology and ethology grows, and as the true conditions of animal life in the circus become known to more people. There is a new age of understanding and compassion on the horizon. It will not tolerate the abuses of the past."

Under siege from punitive taxation, competition from television, and changing social mores, the demoralised circus community still clings tenaciously to its ailing wild animals tradition with the ritual refrain that "a circus without animals is not a circus." For obvious reasons, they prefer to pretend that they're weathering the storm, presenting an upbeat yet increasingly brittle image to the public. Quoted in the Sunday Times in January 1989, Malcolm Clay, secretary of the Association of Circus Proprietors, buoyantly declared: "Britain has more large circuses than at any time since the war. There are 10 large touring companies, with a full complement of animals, and business is looking up. The public is moving back to traditional, live, family entertainment, and they want animals." Audience figures, however, do not seem to confirm such a rosy prognosis. Indeed, even Chris Krenger of Knie admits that, because of fierce competition in the entertainment industry and burgeoning costs, "many circuses are already struggling to survive financially." Foreseeing inevitably stricter laws imposed upon the menageries, he adds that "in 20 years the circus will probably only have some horses and ponies and maybe a camel or llama." Yet by the same token, the circus will inevitably resist such reforms for as long as it possibly can. Bound by the strait-jacket of tradition, ironically, it is this fear of breaking the mould, and this reluctance to utilise the imagination which once nurtured the very heart of the circus tradition that could ultimately spell the death of the circus as more than mere entertainment, but as an art form where humans can learn and present diverse and intricate skills. Notwithstanding the current battle over animal rights, such an eventuality would be more than lamentable. Yet there may well be a solution. Circus impresarios in the U.K. habitually bemoan the fact that they receive no subsidies or any other form of support by central or local government, and enviously point to their East European counterparts who enjoy the privilege of state-run circus schools; to France which currently spends some 18 million francs annually on promoting the circus arts; to Italy where towns are required by law to provide travelling shows with sites and amenities. While such state aid does not currently discriminate against circuses with performing wild animals, it is high time that it did so. Indeed, rather than relying on laws steeped in political pragmatism rather than moral principle in a half-hearted effort to ensure animal welfare, governments would do better to recognise the groundswell of public opinion rising against such institutionalised abuse and, following the lead of Finland, impose an outright ban on the circus' menageries and their wild performing animals. To sweeten the pill, and to drive a wedge between animal tamer die-hards and those practising the genuine arts and skills of the circus, adequate government support should be forthcoming to establish circus schools, allowing re-training in other disciplines for former wild animal performers, and where necessary, tax concessions, grants to enable circuses to modernise their infrastructures and equipment, and special provisions for educating the children of itinerant performers.

Animal-free circuses would not, by any means, be precedent-setting. A unit of the Moscow State Circus, for example, enjoyed resounding success when it visited the U.K. in 1985 without animals. Similarly, for seventeen days in the summer of 1988, Jubilee Gardens on London's South Bank became a "Circus Village," hosting many of the world's new animal-free circus companies, with troupes from China, the USA, Spain, France and Britain. The event was billed as the "Circus of imagination, participation and spectacle: circus re-invented and re-energised - modern circus without performing animals." In his recently published book, New Circus, Reg Bolton describes the phenomenon that is slowly but surely changing the face of one of the oldest of the performing arts: "New Circus tends to leave animals in peace and concentrate on the human endeavours of clowning and physical skills. . . All the traditional acts are there - acrobatics, wire-walking, juggling, trick cycling, trapeze, stilts and other displays of strength, balance and co-ordination. . . So circus is not dying, circus is alive and changing." Tongue in cheek, "New Circus" is also being portrayed as "The Latest Show On Earth".

Yet in instituting an outright ban on travelling menageries and performing circus animals, time will be required not only for circuses to comply and re-adapt themselves to the new regulations, but also to safeguard the future welfare of their existing animals. In this respect, carefully-formulated provisions in the law would be required to prevent the deliberate killing of animals or their sale to unscrupulous dealers, and in this respect animal welfare organisations could play a pivotal role in monitoring the transition period, as well as finding homes or establishing refuges where the animals might live out their days in as natural environment as possible. In many cases, birth control would be an unfortunate but essential ingredient of the plan. In other cases, partial rehabilitation might be attempted, following the example of Zoo Check's successful 1987 project where six tigers, rescued from the squalor of Cross Brothers' Circus in Kent, were provided with a home in 15 enclosed acres of tiger country in the Bannerghatta Wildlife Park, Bangalore, India. As Zoo Check founder Virginia McKenna admits, they will never be truly free after long years of confinement and doubts surrounding their parentage, but at least their new habitat allowed them to run and swim for the first time in their lives.

But although circuses are facing hard times, it would be premature to assume that the end is already in sight for the barred beast wagon and performing wild animal in the arena. Even though pressure is constantly increasing, it now appears that the circus, like its marine counterpart, is determined to flog the 'conservation' and 'education' horse for all it is worth. In this respect, the notion that the performing animal displays nothing but its own 'natural behaviour' under the big top, and that an endangered species imprisoned for life in a beast wagon is actually being saved from inevitable extinction in the wild, is today being heard more often than ever before. Though such arguments are demonstrably spurious, having more relation to traditional circus mendacity and hyperbole than reality, it has often been said that a lie told regularly enough will eventually attain some semblance of credibility amongst a gullible public. Unfortunately, there is growing evidence to suggest that certain ethologists who have spent much of their education and careers studying animals in the artificial confines of the laboratory or model farm are aiding and abetting the circus in promoting this colourful fallacy. Should this trend continue, it is conceivable that some ethologists, to the shame of their science, may eventually give circuses a new lease on life.

A recently released report by the animal behaviourist Marthe Kiley-Worthington, Animals in Circuses, is a case in point. The repercussions of this study are potentially far-reaching, particularly since it was commissioned - to the tune of 10,000 pounds - by the RSPCA, an organisation which has been vigorously opposed to the exploitation of wild animals in circuses for many years. The report revealed that in British circuses, lions and tigers are confined to their beast wagons for 90 per cent of the time, each animal occupying a space of between 0.17 and 0.45 cubic metres; that elephants are shackled for 60 per cent of the time and are only able to lie down with difficulty; that 40 per cent of the big cats have to be forced into the ring "by poking a broom handle into their wagon"; that bears spend more than a third of their time in abnormal activity such as pacing to and fro; that "Animals that persistently show a dislike of entering the ring and do not act up to the audience applause, or cannot get used to the performance with the noise, lights etc., are culled." Dr. Kiley-Worthington's findings, however, appeared to have little bearing on her ultimate, pro-circus conclusions. Indeed, both circuses and dolphinaria were virtually provided with a clean bill of health, the ethologist arguing - albeit with greater recourse to subjective opinion than hard evidence - that circus animals actually benefit from learning tricks, that the endangered species of the beast wagon play an important role in conservation, and that the glittering shows have inherent educational value. Predictably, this provoked a veritable storm of controversy, with Kiley-Worthington threatening to sue the RSPCA if it dared to quote from her report without permission, and the charity accusing the scientist of adulterating her findings with an entirely subjective, pro-circus bias. In the months of antagonism that followed, several full-page articles appeared in the British press which, while giving generous coverage to Dr. Kiley-Worthington's supportive views of the circus, scarcely even touched on the actual findings of her study, nor the parameters under which it was conducted. Indeed, in this respect, it could be said that the very foundations of her research seem inherently flawed from an ecological point of view, since she chose to compare the circus animals' behaviour not - as might first appear logical - with their relatives in the wild, but merely their counterparts in zoos and safari parks. Such profound subtleties escaped the press, however. Banner headlines declared: 'Why Animal Lovers Can Still Be Circus Fans '; 'Who Says It's Cruelty?' and 'Circus Animals Benefit From Learning Those Tricks We All Thought Were So Humiliating'. Inevitably, the Circus Proprietors' Association (ACP) greeted both the report and its attendant publicity with barely concealed glee and promptly provided Dr. Kiley-Worthington with additional funds to pursue her research and prepare her treatise for publication. Also crowing over the report were the circuses themselves, with posters and ringmasters proudly proclaiming their scientifically-approved clean bill of health to the visiting public. Outside the ticket caravan of Gerry Cottle's Circus, for example, a hand-written poster declared in bold lettering: "Latest RSPCA Survey Confirms NO Cruelty in British Circus. Circus Animals Benefit from Training, Says Dr. Marthe Kiley-Worthington." Meanwhile, the ACP, citing the ethologist's most flattering conclusions, also petitioned the owners of the notorious Blackpool Tower Circus and its underground menagerie, urging them to cancel the forthcoming ban on performing animals there. But is it true to say that Dr. Kiley-Worthington actually approves of the conditions in which the Tower Circus' animals are kept below ground in artificial light? "I said I would not mention circuses by name," she told me. "I was not going to be a spy organisation for the RSPCA - I'm a scientist. The circuses I think have to be patted on the back for letting me in at all knowing what the RSPCA policy was. I said I would not release individual circus names and I would not go into depth about the difficulties or problems or outrages of individual named circuses. . . I did work in Blackpool Tower and I don't think that it's worse than any other circus. . . there's plenty of places in zoos where animals are kept out of the light. . . I don't think Blackpool Tower Circus is to be banned unless you're going to ban a whole lot of other zoos and things. . . I don't think you get anywhere by banning things of that nature and you won't be able to do it anyway because public opinion has changed here now and it will not get through parliament - with or without me. It's a restriction on individual liberties."

And indeed, notwithstanding findings which actually serve to reaffirm the bleakness and deprivation that circus animals must suffer in captivity, there are a multitude of references in the report for the circus world to crow about. She writes, though without a shred of evidence to back-up her claims: "Acts can enhance the natural behaviour and beauty of the animals, and encourage further respect and admiration of them as members of a species, and individuals. . . With appropriate music, props and proper presentation the act can be educational, entertaining and exciting." Reacting to criticism that circus animals are anthropomorphised, dressed up in human clothing and often portrayed as 'clowns', Kiley-Worthington claims that this could actually encourage respect. She declares: ". . . it could be argued that presenting the animals as 'stupid' human beings shows them in a way that exercises our compassion and responsibility to them - as we must respond to children or handicapped human beings. It is a question of whether we believe that compassion for the underdog, or respect for a highly intelligent and able other being is most desirable to encourage in humans, and of most benefit to animals in the long run."

But in attempting to define 'natural behaviour', Dr. Kiley-Worthington apparently has to admit that at least some circus acts are distinctly alien to the animals' instincts. Is it something that an animal only does in the wild, she asks? If that is the case "we must include all dogs walking on leads, horses being ridden or pulling things, cows being milked, and so on since none of these behaviours are in the animals' natural repertoire." Still on the intellectual trapeze, she then asks whether behaviour which does not fall into the 'natural' category is necessarily wrong anyway. She cites the example of elephants balancing on revolving spheres and points out that although there may be "coercion and fear" involved in training, it also involves admirable elephant-human trust and skills. It is therefore "debatable that only 'natural' behaviour should be performed by animals in circuses, if what we are after is increasing human respect, understanding and awareness of other animals as other intelligent, sentient, admirable beings." She concludes that "the dignity of the animal, and the wrongness of performing 'unnatural' acts by both domestic and wild animals in circuses and zoos are difficult concepts to define."

While voicing her dissatisfaction with conditions in which certain wild animals are kept in circuses, Dr. Kiley-Worthington stresses her belief that little stands in the way of fundamental improvements. "The environment must be constructed to, at least resemble, the environment which the animal evolved to live in both in a physical and social sense," she declares, adding that "with a little innovative thinking" this can often be achieved. Once again, however, she provides no clues as to how the lion wagon can be made to resemble an endless expanse of savannah or dry thorn scrub, or for the snow leopard, the pure and ethereal wilderness of the Himalayas. Even so, the scientist even appears to suggest that circus animals can grow accustomed to their stress and deprivation: "Because of their past experience, lifestyle and training," she declares, "circus animals have become familiar with many things that inexperienced animals would find distressing. The same phenomenon is encountered in human beings where aborigines or bushmen who have never been to large cities find the traffic, noise and bustle initially terrifying, but become accustomed to it after a time, and indeed may even like it and become city people. This was amazingly illustrated by the recent popular film 'Crocodile Dundee'."

In another section of her report, Dr. Kiley-Worthington voices her belief that the endangered species of the circus menagerie can even help the ecology of the planet, asserting that "It is nonsense to say that animals cannot play a role in conservation." Besides inferring that breeding in the beast wagon could contribute to the conservation of endangered species, she insists that performing animals have already helped to conserve their relatives in the wild. She writes: "It is the dolphins and other sea mammals demonstrating cognitive abilities that have sparked off world wide attention on their conservation. How better to demonstrate this, with them and other animals, than by showing how clever and able they are? Where else can this be done for the majority of people but in a circus?" But what is most ironic in Dr. Kiley-Worthington's glowing praise of the dolphin exploitation industry is that her comments appear below a photograph of Circus Knie's dolphinarium in Switzerland, the very same establishment that even the American authorities criticised in 1987 for its spate of dolphin deaths caused by "social behavioural problems."

Perhaps most troubling of all, however, is Kiley-Worthington's attempt to alter the very status of the captive circus animal. She suggests - again with little evidence to support her views - that wild animals in captivity should no longer be regarded as wild at all, but as domesticated as any farm animal or family pet, thus removing their "special status", particularly the requirement that their environment should be as 'natural' as possible. "There still remains the argument that wild animals are closely related to nature and must have all 'Natural'," she writes. "It is unnatural for the lion to be in an exercise cage or the ring and therefore by definition wrong. This of course depends on how one is to define Nature and natural." Despite such intellectual obfuscation, information on animal instincts, genetic make-up, intelligence, behaviour in the wild and social customs was almost entirely ignored and therefore had no bearing upon the apparently arbitrary recommendation that 'wild' captive animals should be downgraded to the 'domestic' category. Indeed, it is all the more puzzling that this effort to reassess the "special status" of captive wild animals has come at a time when zoos are at last being obliged by legislation to provide their inmates with facilities deemed suitable for each species' unique behavioural requirements. The Kiley-Worthington hypothesis could also be challenged simply on the grounds of common sense. Dogs, for example, were first tamed during the Stone Age, and most farm animals too went through the process of domestication thousands of years ago. The innate wildness of the lion, chimpanzee, elephant, bear and rhino on the other hand - those typical stars of the circus menagerie and arena - remains virtually intact and one might suspect that even Dr. Kiley-Worthington herself would betray little hesitation if given the choice between stepping into a cage with a house cat or a circus leopard. Yet to Dr. Kiley-Worthington and the particular brand of anthropocentrism which she espouses, civilisation will even teach the wild - suddenly domesticated - animal a sense of formal etiquette. She states: "Like pets, captive animals need to form emotional bonds, to be given rewards and even to be taught 'moral sense' of what is right and wrong."

At the core of such anthropocentrism is one of the most enduring follies of modern science - the notion that Life, with all of its myriad subtleties and interdependences, can be understood simply by breaking it down into separate component parts, in much the same way that an apprentice mechanic would disassemble his first motor-car. This mechanistic, fragmentary view of Creation is especially evident in ethological methodology, and given the fact that this particular branch of science is often linked to conservation, it is all the more ironic that its habit of systematic categorisation often amounts to an antithesis of ecology. The Kiley-Worthington report is no exception. In this case, not only are the animals artificially separated from their natural environment - by regarding them as no longer wild, but domesticated - and from the social customs which shaped their very existence as species and individuals, but their behaviour patterns in captivity are split relentlessly into convenient, though crudely over-simplified categories. Says a lecturer in veterinary science and former colleague of Marthe Kiley-Worthington: "This kind of fragmentation in ethology is becoming even worse. We're all joking about teaching Molecular Animal Husbandry - it's getting to that kind of state. If you go to an ethology lecture now it's all mathematics - the blackboards full of formulae. In trying so desperately to avoid emotion and anthropomorphism they go to the opposite extreme of anthropocentrism and the result is just another kind of bias."

Indeed, it must be said that many respected ethologists have already woken up to that fact, believing that the circus menagerie and dolphinarium has no place in an age characterised by a more profound ecological awareness. As the renowned animal behaviourist Dr. Desmond Morris has declared recently: "I find circuses deeply offensive. We are just beginning to recognise animals as important in their own right. Circuses throw us back to the Middle Ages."

Though it may well be interpreted as being little more than another gimmick or public relations stunt, even some zoos are now alluding to the devastation that has been wreaked by the futile vanity of speciesism, where the human race is lord over all that it surveys, the master of all Creation. Amidst endless rows of cages holding animal curiosities from every corner of the globe, many of which are on the brink of extinction in the wild, visitors may come across a barred enclosure containing nothing but a full-length mirror and a large label reading "The Most Dangerous Animal On Earth." One might also add that despite its much-cherished, much-vaunted creed of freedom, the naked ape is actually the most imprisoned species of all, held captive by outmoded ideas and traditions, figments of superiority, and beneath this thin, brave veneer, a pitiful, haunting insignificance before the capriciousness of the universe and the unknown, spiralling away into eternity. For all the technological achievements of which it can boast, for all the art and culture that its civilisations have crafted, the human race has yet to learn, yet to practice, one childishly simple yet profound and immutable ecological truth. As Albert Schweitzer declared: "Man can no longer live for himself alone. We must realise that all life is valuable and that we are united to all life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship with the universe." Ecology, after all, is far more than mere science, more than the saving of individual species and habitats. In essence, it is an appreciation and understanding of the relationships, co-operation, and myriad interdependences of life's totality. Without that totality, without that diversity which the human race so strangely seems to regard as a threat akin to anarchism and chaos, we are all lost. The planetary ark is not merely a vessel that carries life through the great ebb and flow of the universe; it is actually woven from life itself. For every forest razed, every animal pushed overboard into oblivion, the ark lists a few degrees more, sinks a little deeper. Though the human hand that so jealously grasps the tiller seems supremely, even desperately confident in plotting some vague course towards some equally vague destiny, the ark, it could be said, is already foundering.

The barred menagerie and the dolphinarium, like the factory farm and the vivisection laboratory, is a microcosm of our utilitarian relationship with the beings which give life to planet Ark. In hastening the demise of the beast wagon and the concrete dolphin pool, we are also hastening our return to Mother Earth; by breaking open the cages, we may also find release within ourselves; by resisting the temptation to play the role of a supreme technological god by keeping species on ice for a thousand years, we may uncover within ourselves a passion to save the wilderness instead and in so doing, re-discover the forgotten quintessence of the human identity, that ancient and mystical bond with the spirit of the planet that gave us birth.

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