The king parrot is eating my pomegranates and teaching me to accommodate thieves in my life. Arian Wallach

I don’t know what he wants from me,” says Arian Wallach, wildlife scientist at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia,  a 2013 Eureka Prize winner and member of the IWCN Coexistence Council. A gorgeous king parrot squawks at her as we talk. Arian is sitting on a balcony in a forested landscape. It looks like a cozy tree house to me as we talk: her in Australia and me in the United States. “I specifically put the food there, so he would not bother me while we talked,” she says. I remark on his beauty. I have never seen a king parrot before. She talks to the bird, “She thinks you are beautiful, I think you are bossy!” She continues, “Beauty is ranked within a species. And you look like all the other king parrots around here.” He squawks at her. “He just said something. It sounded like, ‘I kind of disagree with you. My beauty is in relation to the universe.’” Arian coexists with this king parrot around her home regularly. “He swoops down on us, or hangs upside down from the deck and yells at us.” She still feeds him and talks to him like he is an old friend. She coexists.

Arian is a compassionate conservationist. “I want to be a good friend to whomever I interact with and treat others as I would like to be treated.” Her philosophy works for people as well as king parrots and other wildlife. 

Arian’s research has allowed her to dive deeply into the philosophy of conservation and how we treat and label wildlife. In Australia, “we put species into two categories: native and non-native. And conservationists here have determined that their role is to protect native species and ecological communities as they were found when James Cook arrived in Australia. They want to hold the country to that state forever.” 

This male dingo hung out with us in the Simpson Desert for a time and taught me to accept my humanity. Arian Wallach

She has spent 15 years in Australia studying the dingo. “The dingo was here when James Cook arrived. But it does not have the same status as, let’s say the king parrot does, because the dingo’s history in Australia remains a mystery. Dingoes also do not obey our definition of “species.” Dingoes are often regarded as “impure” and “non-native” because they can interbreed with domestic dogs. Just as other canids do. And conservationists seem to love their categories more than they do living beings who disrupt those categories.”

Conservationists in many countries have committed themselves to only protecting species that are “pure native species.” She put this into perspective for me: Would it be acceptable for us to say that a human is only worthy if that person is “pure?”  “Words like “purity” have very fascist undertones, terms that have been used with humans that today we do not accept. So why is it acceptable to use this racist language to justify killing wildlife?”

That philosophy has allowed dingoes to be heavily persecuted since European colonization. The rise of the conservation movement in Australia has not changed that. Legally, dingoes are considered a native species, but they are also classified as wild dogs, using the issue of “impurity” has provided a green light for people to kill these “impure mongrel species” at will.  

“I come from Israel, where we all go into the military. I know people who coexist with wolves, lions, and leopards. Here, they don’t have wars, but instead they declare war on puppies and kittens, by throwing out poison bait, gunning them down, or sending robots out to spray poison on them.”

Arian was shocked when she came to Australia to learn that poison was so liberally used.  “I was taught that poison was the enemy of conservationists. Yet here, there is a lethal mindset. If you have a problem, kill the problem.”  Pastoralists and conservationists alike use 10-80 (sodium fluoroacetate) to kill dingoes, foxes and cats in the name of protecting small native animals. In fact, some of the most dangerous places for dingoes are, ironically, inside national parks.

“ You don’t heal the world and make it a better place with guns and poison. You don’t blast yourself into a glorious tomorrow. It does not work. ” says Arian. Her research backs this up. ”When they poison foxes, their population goes up, and their social network breaks down. So instead of having a territory with one small family of foxes, they now have a bunch of youngsters that are running around killing and doing stupid things. Same with dingoes. The more they kill predators, the more predation they are getting on the animals they are trying to protect.” 

For Arian, this killing mentality is not a sustainable solution. “It does not work, it always backfires. We are like the Road Runner and the Coyote! The Coyote always loses every time he tries to kill the Road Runner. The least creative thing we can do is take out a gun.” 

Dr. Arian Wallach
Dr. Arian Wallach

It’s time for both pastoralists and conservationists to consider a different way: coexistence.

For Arian, it’s simple, “I don’t care where the ancestors of that king parrot came from: if he and his ancestors were brought here from someplace else, it does not matter. What I learned from my research with dingoes, an animal that breaks down the native/nonnative binary category, is that I want to be a good friend to whomever I interact with and treat others as I would like to be treated. To appreciate the capacity of life to reinvent itself over and over again.”

“Compassionate conservation is reshaping what conservation is about. It is challenging everything: what is ok to do in the name of the greater good. It is already mainstream, it just depends on where you are in the world. Not everyone behaves and thinks the way we do in Australia or  America. It is very different in Israel, parts of Asia, like India, and Buddhist countries. There, it is just conservation.”

“Coexistence with dingoes, foxes and cats is so easy. There is nothing to it.  It is just a matter of calming down a little bit. Taking a deep breath and calming down. Re-approaching the problem. Let’s see what options are available.” 

“That is why I am so excited by the International Wildlife Coexistence Network! How do we learn to live amongst and pay attention to all the creatures we live with? How do we solve problems? You have a parrot that is bullying you every day; find a way to solve the problem. That should be the role of conservationists. Makes no difference whatsoever whether you are dealing with a dingo, a cat, a fox or a parrot.”  

 

Take the Pledge

Join the International Wildlife Coexistence Network and take the pledge to embrace a coexistence consciousness as a citizen of the earth. Members will have full access to resources, the latest news, and much more to come!

Let's go!