The sun is shining. The snow is melting. Time for hungry bears to wake and go looking for breakfast.
Which has me thinking about Jordan and Athena. I wonder where they are now, and what they are doing?
Jordan and Athena are the two black bear cubs that gained international attention back in 2015.
They were out shopping for food with mom one day on Vancouver Island. The shopping trip led them into a mobile home park in Port Hardy where mom got into stuff she wasn’t supposed to get into. Someone called the cops.
Conservation officer Bryce Casavant arrived and shot mom. He refused, however, a superior’s orders to shoot the cubs, who were a couple of months old.
He decided they were not problems so tranquillized them and brought them to a vet and then a wildlife recovery centre, which later released them into the wild.
Casavant was suspended and later fired for refusing to follow the boss’ emailed order.
The boss wanted the cubs dead so they would not become nuisance bears like their mom. Casavant believed they could be returned to the wild where they would learn to hunt for natural food instead of getting into people’s garbage.
“My duties as a law-enforcement officer do not include the needless destruction of a baby animal that can be rehabilitated,” he told his boss.
The B.C. Court of Appeal nullified Casavant’s firing, but he has not been reinstated as a conservation officer. A tangled legal battle is continuing but will not settle the ethical issues of this case.
First, anyone authorized to carry a gun surely must have the right to decide when and when not to pull the trigger. He or she is on the scene, better positioned to assess the situation than a boss in a far-off place.
Also, before becoming a conservation officer, Casavant was a soldier who served in Afghanistan, which no doubt helped to develop his thinking on weapons and how and when they should be used.
Second, should we kill the babies of parents we consider our enemies?
History holds other stories of armed people having to decide whether to follow their conscience or orders from a superior. One of the most famous occurred March 16, 1968 during the Vietnam War.
American soldiers fighting the Viet Cong were sent into what was believed to be an enemy stronghold and were ordered to destroy a village named My Lai.
The soldiers, led by Lieutenant William Calley, arrived at the village and found mainly women, children and old men preparing their breakfast. Calley ordered his men to round them up and shoot them.
More than 500 villagers were killed, including 173 children, many just infants.
Some of Calley’s soldiers balked at his order to shoot. Then, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, an American helicopter pilot landed his copter between the soldiers and fleeing villagers and threatened to open fire on his fellow Americans if they did not stop the massacre.
That pilot saved the lives of some innocent humans by telling soldiers to stop following Calley’s kill order. Casavant saved the lives of two innocent baby bears by rejecting his superior’s order.
Both kill orders developed from our refusal to accept that all living things have an equal right to life.
That refusal leads some to believe that:
Bear cubs can be killed because they might grow up to become garbage pickers. Vietnamese kids can be shot because they might grow up to become fighters for what they believe could be better government.
I assume that Jordan and Athena grew to be adult bears enjoying the wilderness life they were destined for and which they deserved. I also assume any kids who survived the My Lai Massacre grew up to be productive citizens of Vietnam.
Yes, we live in a world of laws and practices that authorize killing living things. But anyone doing the killing, or ordering the killing, better be damn sure they understand that every life is sacred, and have a thorough knowledge of the moral principles governing human behaviour.
There is too much unintelligent and unnecessary killing in our societies. We need more people like Bryce Casavant and Warrant Officer Thompson to help us change that
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