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magazine / dec11
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December 2011 issue |
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EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
Wild world
In late September, Toronto’s municipal council voted
to sell, or seek a private company to operate, the money-losing
Toronto Zoo. Within a few days, it came out that
Parques Reunidos, a Spanish company with 71 theme parks
around the world, was preparing a bid. Predictably, the ensuing
debate went like this: One side said no animals should be caged
and displayed for the entertainment of humans. Period. Another
said zoos are invaluable repositories of wildlife DNA that aid the
preservation and reintroduction of species. A third said that
while the other positions are true, zoos play their most critical
role in educating us about wildlife and how environmental
threats affect the organisms with which we share the planet. As
often happens in a good debate, they’re all right to some degree.
This example mirrors the underlying theme of this issue, in
which most of the stories turn on the nexus between animals
and our relations with and attitudes toward them: new ways to
prevent grizzly bears from being struck by freight trains in the
Rocky Mountains; new science about why sockeye salmon are
in dramatic decline; a new lab to study honeybees, a valued
agricultural pollinator also in decline; detective work to determine
why chimney swifts, for which our habitations provide
habitat, are also in decline; news of a modest recovery in
Atlantic cod after decades of decline; and new images of jumping
spiders, a subject of fascination to one particular
zoologist and another particular photographer … and of revulsion
to arachnophobes everywhere.
And that’s just our Wildlife Stories of the Year package.
Elsewhere in this issue, you’ll find more stories about human-animal
relations: our pictorial and poster on the coins of the
Royal Canadian Mint highlight how Canada’s now quarter-century-
old one-dollar coin — the loonie — is manufactured.
An icon on an icon, the coin’s reverse side features that beautiful rendering of a common loon, which artist Robert-Ralph
Carmichael drew in 1976 and adapted late in 1986 for the
first loonie. “The bird was chosen as symbolic of something
we might lose if we’re not careful,” says Carmichael today.
As one of our partners in this year’s Wildlife Photography
of the Year Contest, the Mint’s love of Canadian wildlife will
be declared again — this time on a new non-circulating coin to
be issued in 2012 and featuring this year’s grand-prize-winning
image of a praying mantis on a stalk of grass, taken by Robert
Ganz of Montréal.
When it comes to attitudes toward and the welfare of animals,
albeit working animals and livestock, the Calgary Stampede
faces intense scrutiny. As our story “Rodeo Renewal” explores, the
Stampede has implemented many measures in recent years to
improve the care and safety of its performing animals, including
monitoring emotional reactions in bucking stock, with
input from animal sciences expert Temple Grandin, who says
fear is worse than pain to most animals.
I remember a visit to the Toronto Zoo in 1985, shortly
before the first loonies appeared in our pockets and purses. I
went there to see the giant pandas, Quinn Quinn and Sha Yan,
on loan from China’s Sichuan Province. I left with two indelible
impressions: I was sad to see these singular animals caged
but thrilled to have witnessed, face to face, such rare wonders
of the planet. If the zoo is sold, I hope its new owners build on
the good work begun there four decades ago. And I hope this
issue deepens your appreciation of all the world’s creatures.
— Eric Harris
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