throwing nuclear weapons at this point. That’s because the Soviet Union knows that we can inflict unacceptable damage upon them and they can inflict unacceptable damage upon us. But if you read the supporting document for this year’s military budget, it says that we must be prepared to fight, to survive and to win a nuclear war. Anyone believing that we can fight, survive and win a nuclear war, in my estimation, is by definition, a psychotic. Another implication is that we are killing our children. Studies are beginning to be made public indicating that large percentages of our children don’t even believe that they will achieve adulthood, because we will end the world in a nuclear holocaust. And when you destroy the hopes and the dreams and the aspirations of children, you are killing those children. And when you kill the children, you are destroying your future; and in destroying your future you are destroying yourselves. This is what I learned in the course of six days, listening to some of the most brilliant minds in this country talking about the incredible implications of America’s military budget. lif America explodes in the next several months, or few years, it will not be from a nuclear device triggered by the Soviet Union. It will be the social dynamite of tens of thousands of human beings who define themselves as desperate. We’re building this madness on the backs of the people least able to handle the shock of this country withdrawing from a commitment to address its human misery. Every major city in this country is having significant problems. The infrastructure of government, the infrastructure of urban life throughout this country is breaking down. And the President of the United States says, “We can solve the problems with private industry. The corporations of America will address the human misery.” Recipe for Hope Well, I may be a simplistic person, but I believe that the only place where the people can express their collective will is through their government, not through some corporate board. And to withdraw from a public responsibility to address the human misery of our fellow citizens, seems to me places us in a sad and tragic place. To continue to thwart the hopes and the dreams of our children, to intimidate the poor, to threaten the senior citizens, to make no significant effort to address the human misery in this country with new initiatives, is a recipe for disaster. If America explodes in the next several months, or few years, it will not be from a nuclear device triggered by the Soviet Union. It will be the social dynamite of tens of thousands of human beings who define themselves as desperate and who perceive their country as not caring about them and their hopes and their aspirations. Reaganomics and Reaganism are not addressing their problems. New federalism is only a recipe for state’s rights. It will create regional conflicts, Leaving Monkey Island The zoo experience is tame. It is manageable, convenient, predictable. We are held captive by the same contrived restrictions that shape the behavior — and thus our perceptions — of the animals. By Edwin Dobb Drawing by Steve Winkenwerder And after this it is hard to keep chewing away at our truth. — from An Ox Looks at a Man, by Carlos Drummond de Andrade he liontailed macaque is a rare monkey. Still hunted for food by poachers, fewer than a thousand of them are alive in their native habitat, the dense mountainous forests of southwestern India. Woodland Park Zoological Gardens in Seattle has assembled one of the largest captive breeding collections of macaca silenus in the world. Hence the concern of zoo officials when eight of the macaques recently scaled a stand of reeds near the perimeter of their new habitat, Monkey Island, and left the zoo. It’s tempting to romanticize the incident. Under any circumstances, the escape of a confined creature can stir whatever residue of revolt remains in the human heart. But it’s more accurate to say that these small primates simply wandered off. The zoo walls are a minor obstacle to able climbers. And once outside they hardly behaved like desperate escapees, roaming no more than a few blocks from the Park. Presumably the exotic surroundings of a suburban American community disoriented these natives of cages. But there’s no compelling evidence that the monkeys, left undisturbed, would have strayed much farther if the region beyond the zoo was “red in tooth and claw.” As it happened, zookeepers had little difficulty rounding up the delinquent macaques. Armed with nets, flashlights, and more than a little laughter, they combed through the neighborhood surrounding the zoo. By the following morning the last of the monkeys had been captured and returned to a secure cell in the Primate House. Less than a day after their liberation they were eating a typical breakfast in captivity: fruit, greens, and monkey chow. Local media treated the incident like a review of a Walt Disney movie — another humorous, heart-warming tale about irresistibly cute but mischievous creatures. Monkey business: the kids love it. This approach has become an habitual substitute for fresh considerations of our relationship with animals — a relationship that has always paralleled human history and, during the last two centuries, has been defined by the evolution of zoos. In a remarkably lucid essay (Why Look at Animals?), John Berger points out that the first public zoos — the Jardin des Plantes in 1793, the London Zoo in 1828, the Berlin Zoo in 1844 — were founded when animals began to disappear from our daily lives. Animals couldn’t compete with machines on the farms and roadways, in the mills, etc. No longer essential, they came to occupy peripheral positions in the human community — as performers, specimens, and pets. Nevertheless, the number of subdued animals was small compared to existing populations in the wild. The treatment of individual creatures, in captivity and in the wild, often was cruel. But with notable exceptions — like the American buffalo — few species were threatened with extinction. More important, numerous immense wilderness areas remained wild: uncultivated, unassisted, and untamed by homo sapiens. They were beyond the reach of economics and government: terrae incognitae. Those few people who risked traveling or living in these anarchic regions either learned to live with the ways of the wild, or perished. In a short time, however, this condition was also reversed by the Industrial Revolution and its accompanying devaluation of animals. Concern about the imminent loss of entire species provoked the emergence of a science that is a signature of the 20th century: ecology. Contradictions like wildlife management followed. Bureaucracies of biology multiplied. And in recent years we began keeping body counts of the wild creatures, and attaching radio-telemmetry devices as part of migratory surveillance studies. Undoubtedly necessary, but nonetheless unsettling. The New Breed As the list of endangered and extinct species lengthens, a shift in the form and function of zoos is occurring. Sideshow barkers, alligator wrestlers and vivisectionists have been replaced by enlightened ecologists who believe that the principal goals of a zoo should be conservation and education. The Woodland Park Zoo reflects this advancement. Rejecting the tidy but artificial categories of earlier days, planners at Woodland Park are beginning to design small-scale habitats that resemble the original interactive environments of the species represented. The recently constructed “African Savanna” illustrates this difference. Opened in July of 1980, the Savanna approximates the living conditions of several naturally occurring species that can be found in a similar region in Africa. Zebra, giraffe, waterbok, hippopotamus, and several types of birds seem to share an open plain of low grassy hills that’s about as large as two city blocks. In a waterhole in front of one of the protected viewing platforms, Egyptian geese dive underwater with the speed and agility of ocean-bred seals. After a time they waddle onto shore, shake their feathers dry, and curl down in the reeds. Many visitors to the stand either leave too quickly or are too distracted — by eating, picture-taking, impromptu narrations — to notice that the right wing of each bird has been clipped. The geese cannot leave the sanctuary. They can’t fly. The practices of clipping wings and housing birds in small wire boxes are unnecessary in those few prosperous zoos that can afford massive, vaulted cages. Woodland Park has one small walk-through aviary. No doubt others would be constructed immediately if the money were available. Some of the methods used to control birds — especially distasteful (to zoo officials as well) because the natural boundless range of winged creatures is impossible to approximate — continue to remind us that there are no zoos without barriers, a truism perhaps forgotten as barriers are softened and camouflaged. In the African Savanna, for instance, barriers exist to control every central element in the lives of captive creatures. Interaction between male and female is subject to the breeding schedule of zookeepers. Adaptive behavior is atrophied by artificially neutral buffer zones that separate animals from the demands and perils of native environments. And carnivores are segregated so they don’t eat each other. A few years ago I took my son and daughter to the children’s section of the San Diego Zoo. While gently cupping two soft, butter-colored chicks in his palms, my son asked the attendant what the zoo did with the dozens of similarly cuddly creatures incubated every day. Her answer became an unforgettable lesson in the ironic dynamics of captivity: the chicks are fed to the large birds, the hawks and eagles. Since then he’s always looked for evidence of this hidden zoo. The transition from the Primate House to Monkey Island exemplifies a softening of barriers. The Primate House was built at Woodland Park in 1907. Originally it included the office of the Zoo Director. Only monkeys reside there today. A few — including the prodigal macaque — are being transferred to Monkey Island. The Island is a miniature, open-air 16 Clinton St. Quarterly
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