worst of these predictions have not come true, some people have been adversely affected by efforts to save the spotted owl: keeping them alive with us has had a cost. What’s more, our efforts have not yet been completely effective: the spotted owl remains threatened, most particularly by the invasive barred owls, for which we have built a corridor straight into the Pacific Northwest. The Endangered Species Act charges the government to protect spotted owls, and so the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is legally required to do something about this threat. Their current proposal, a policy that is being carried out right now by our government, is to kill barred owls, to capture and shoot the invasive birds. To save owls, we are killing owls. This is a shocking fact, an uncomfortable sign that there is no easy way to steward the natural world. I believe barred owls are God’s creatures, and that they themselves have done nothing wrong, simply following their instincts and adapting to the world human beings have reshaped. The idea that these owls should be killed bothers me, but I know of no other viable proposal to defend and protect spotted owls from their incursion. Since barred owls are not endangered, it does not threaten their species to kill individual owls. Still, this is a reminder that there is a cost to protecting the spotted owl, to other creatures as well as to human beings.
With the great power we hold as the dominant species on the planet comes the great responsibility of taking care of the world around us.
them? Furthermore, how do we decide between the spotted owl and the barred owl, between the desire to keep all species alive with the concern to keep other creatures alive? What should we be willing to sacrifice to follow God’s command to Noah, and when might we decide that such a command is unreasonable or impossible to obey? The Christian tradition does not offer clear answers to these questions, and neither does our society. We do not have common ground on how to balance the human economy with species preservation. Animal rights activists and environmentalists do not agree on when or whether we can justifiably kill invasive creatures. My own view is that we should be working hard to save the spotted owl and to preserve its old growth habitat; I believe that logging must be restricted in a large territory and invasive barred owls should be eradicated as much as possible. However, I have come to these perspectives in dialogue with others who disagree, and I continue to respect them and learn from their views. This is why I use the spotted owl to explain what Christian ethics is: the owl demonstrates the complications of applying morality in our world, reminding us how deep and intricate are the moral challenges we face, how the best we can do in many situations is continue a dialogue rather than seek easy judgments or answers. If we are to deal with issues as complicated as the spotted owl, if we are to draw on a diverse tradition thousands of years old, then Christian ethics must be about such continued dialogue, questions, and complexity. S
This raises another set of very difficult questions: How hard must we work to keep other species alive with us? Will this goal ever come into conflict with the goal of thriving, fulfilled human lives? If it does, how do we decide between FEATURES > PLU SCENE SPRING 2009
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