thenation--2020-08-07--What Happens When Covid-19 Becomes Old News?

The struggle against Covid-19 has often been compared to fighting a war .
Much of this rhetoric is bombast , but the similarities between the struggle against the virus and against human enemies are real enough .
War reporting and pandemic reporting likewise have much in common because , in both cases , journalists are dealing with and describing matters of life and death .
Public interest is fueled by deep fears , often more intense during an epidemic because the whole population is at risk .
In a war , aside from military occupation and area bombing , terror @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the battlefield .
The nature of the dangers stemming from military violence and the outbreak of a deadly disease may appear very different .
But looked at from the point of view of a government , they both pose an existential threat because failure in either crisis may provoke some version of regime change .
People seldom forgive governments that get them involved in losing wars or that fail to cope adequately with a natural disaster like the coronavirus .
The powers-that-be know that they must fight for their political lives , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any success as their own and doing their best to escape blame for what has gone wrong .
I first experienced a pandemic in the summer of 1956 when , at the age of 6 , I caught polio in Cork , Ireland .
The epidemic there began soon after virologist Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for it in the United States , but before it was available in Europe .
Polio epidemics were at their height in the first half of the 20th century and , in a number of respects , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people caught the disease but only a minority were permanently disabled by or died of it .
In contrast with Covid-19 , however , it was young children , not the old , who were most at risk .
The terror caused by poliomyelitis , to use its full name , was even higher than during the present epidemic exactly because it targeted the very young and its victims did not generally disappear into the cemetery but were highly visible on crutches and in wheelchairs , or prone in iron lungs .
Parents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illness because it was spread by great numbers of asymptomatic carriers who did not know they had it .
The worst outbreaks were in the better-off parts of modern cities like Boston , Chicago , Copenhagen , Melbourne , New York , and Stockholm .
People living there enjoyed a good supply of clean water and had effective sewage disposal , but did not realize that all of this robbed them of their natural immunity to the polio virus .
The pattern in Cork was the same : Most of the sick came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city , while people living in the slums were largely unaffected .
Everywhere , there was a frantic search to identify those , like foreign immigrants , who might be responsible for spreading the disease .
In the New York epidemic of 1916 , even animals were suspected of doing so and 72,000 cats and 8,000 dogs were hunted down and killed .
The illness weakened my legs permanently and I have a severe limp so , even reporting in dangerous circumstances in the Middle East , I could only walk , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my disabilities from the first , but did not think much about how I had acquired them or the epidemic itself until perhaps four decades later .
It was the 1990s and I was then visiting ill-supplied hospitals in Iraq as that country ’ s health system was collapsing under the weight of UN sanctions .
As a child , I had once been a patient in an almost equally grim hospital in Ireland and it occurred to me then , as I saw children in those desperate circumstances in Iraq , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had happened to me .
At that time , my ignorance was remarkably complete .
I did not even know the year when the polio epidemic had happened in Ireland , nor could I say if it was caused by a virus or a bacterium .
So I read up on the outbreak in newspapers of the time and Irish Health Ministry files , while interviewing surviving doctors , nurses , and patients .
Kathleen O ’ Callaghan , a doctor at St. Finbarr ’ s hospital , where I had been brought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that people in the city were so frightened “ they would cross the road rather than walk past the walls of the fever hospital.
” My father recalled that the police had to deliver food to infected homes because no one else would go near them .
A Red Cross nurse , Maureen O ’ Sullivan , who drove an ambulance at the time , told me that , even after the epidemic was over , people would quail at the sight of her ambulance , claiming “ the polio is back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their houses or they might even fall to their knees to pray .
The local authorities in a poor little city like Cork where I grew up understood better than national governments today that fear is a main feature of epidemics .
They tried then to steer public opinion between panic and complacency by keeping control of the news of the outbreak .
When British newspapers like the Times reported that polio was rampant in Cork , they called this typical British slander and exaggeration .
But their efforts to suppress the news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Instead , they dented their own credibility by trying to play down what was happening .
In that pre-television era , the main source of information in my hometown was the Cork Examiner , which , after the first polio infections were announced at the beginning of July 1956 , accurately reported on the number of cases , but systematically underrated their seriousness .
Headlines about polio like “ Panic Reaction Without Justification ” and “ Outbreak Not Yet Dangerous ” regularly ran below the fold on its front page .
Above @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Suez Crisis and the Hungarian uprising of that year .
In the end , this treatment only served to spread alarm in Cork where many people were convinced that the death toll was much higher than the officially announced one and that bodies were being secretly carried out of the hospitals at night .
My father said that , in the end , a delegation of local businessmen , the owners of the biggest shops , approached the owners of the Cork Examiner , threatening to withdraw their advertising unless it stopped reporting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this story , but when I checked the newspaper files many years later , I found that he was correct and the paper had almost entirely stopped reporting on the epidemic just as sick children were pouring into St. Finbarr ’ s hospital .
The Misreporting of Wars and Epidemics By the time I started to research a book about the Cork polio epidemic that would be titled Broken Boy , I had been reporting wars for 25 years , starting with the Northern Irish Troubles in the 1970s , then the Lebanese @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kuwait , the war that followed Washington ’ s post-9/11 takeover of Afghanistan , and the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq .
After publication of the book , I went on covering these endless conflicts for the British paper the Independent as well as new conflicts sparked in 2011 by the Arab Spring in Libya , Syria , and Yemen .
As the coronavirus pandemic began this January , I was finishing a book ( just published ) , War in the Age of Trump : The Defeat of Isis , the Fall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran .
Almost immediately , I noticed strong parallels between the Covid-19 pandemic and the polio epidemic 64 years earlier .
Pervasive fear was perhaps the common factor , though little grasped by governments of this moment .
Boris Johnson ’ s in Great Britain , where I was living , was typical in believing that people had to be frightened into lockdown , when , in fact , so many were already terrified and needed to be reassured .
I also noticed ominous similarities between the ways in which epidemics and wars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responsibility—Donald Trump represents an extreme version of this—invariably claim victories and successes even as they fail and suffer defeats .
The words of the Confederate general “ Stonewall ” Jackson came to mind .
On surveying ground that had only recently been a battlefield , he asked an aide : “ Did you ever think , sir , what an opportunity a battlefield affords liars ?
” This has certainly been true of wars , but no less so , it seemed to me , of epidemics , as President Trump was indeed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and over again ) .
At least in retrospect , disinformation campaigns in wars tend to get bad press and be the subject of much finger wagging .
But think about it a moment : It stands to reason that people trying to kill each other will not hesitate to lie about each other as well .
While the glib saying that “ truth is the first casualty of war ” has often proven a dangerous escape hatch for poor reporting or unthinking acceptance of a self-serving version of battlefield realities ( spoon-fed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , it could equally be said that truth is the first casualty of pandemics .
The inevitable chaos that follows in the wake of the swift spread of a deadly disease and the desperation of those in power to avoid being held responsible for the soaring loss of life lead in the same direction .
There is , of course , nothing inevitable about the suppression of truth when it comes to wars , epidemics , or anything else for that matter .
Journalists , individually and collectively , will always be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ PR men , one in which victory for either side is never inevitable .
Unfortunately , wars and epidemics are melodramatic events and melodrama militates against real understanding .
“ If it bleeds , it leads ” is true of news priorities when it comes to an intensive care unit in Texas or a missile strike in Afghanistan .
Such scenes are shocking but do not necessarily tell us much about what is actually going on .
The recent history of war reporting is not encouraging .
Journalists will always have to fight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I have had the depressing feeling since Washington ’ s first Gulf War , against Saddam Hussein ’ s Iraq in 1991 , that the propagandists are increasingly winning the news battle and that accurate journalism , actual eyewitness reporting , is in retreat .
By its nature , reporting wars is always going to be difficult and dangerous work , but it has become more so in these years .
Coverage of Washington ’ s Afghan and Iraqi wars was often inadequate , but not as bad as the more recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its near total absence from the disaster that is Yemen .
This lack fostered misconceptions even when it came to fundamental questions like who is actually fighting whom , for what reasons , and just who are the real prospective winners and losers .
Of course , there is little new about propaganda , controlling the news , or spreading “ false facts.
” Ancient Egyptian pharaohs inscribed self-glorifying and mendacious accounts of their battles on monuments , now thousands of years old , in which their defeats are lauded as heroic victories @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in recent decades is the far greater sophistication and resources that governments can deploy in shaping the news .
With opponents like longtime Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein , demonization was never too difficult a task because he was a genuinely demonic autocrat .
Yet the most influential news story about the Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait in 1990 and the US-led counter-invasion proved to be a fake .
This was a report that , in August 1990 , invading Iraqi soldiers had tipped babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital and left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A Kuwaiti girl reported to have been working as a volunteer in the hospital swore before a US congressional committee that she had witnessed that very atrocity .
Her story was hugely influential in mobilizing international support for the war effort of the administration of President George H.W .
Bush and the US allies he teamed up with .
In reality it proved purely fictional .
The supposed hospital volunteer turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington .
Several journalists and human rights specialists expressed skepticism at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out by the outrage the tale provoked .
It was a classic example of a successful propaganda coup : instantly newsworthy , not easy to disprove , and when it was—long after the war—it had already had the necessary impact , creating support for the US-led coalition going to war with Iraq .
In a similar fashion , I reported on the American war in Afghanistan in 2001–02 at a time when coverage in the international media had left the impression that the Taliban had been decisively defeated by the US military and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shots of bombs and missiles exploding on the Taliban front lines and Northern Alliance opposition forces advancing unopposed to “ liberate ” the Afghan capital , Kabul .
When , however , I followed the Taliban retreating south to Kandahar Province , it became clear to me that they were not by any normal definition a beaten force , that their units were simply under orders to disperse and go home .
Their leaders had clearly grasped that they were overmatched and that it would be better to wait until conditions changed in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happened by 2006 , when they went back to war in a big way .
They then continued to fight in a determined fashion to the present day .
By 2009 , it was already dangerous to drive beyond the southernmost police station in Kabul due to the risk that Taliban patrols might create pop-up checkpoints anywhere along the road .
None of the wars I covered then have ever really ended .
What has happened , however , is that they have largely ended up receding , if not disappearing , from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , if a successful vaccine for Covid-19 isn ’ t found and used globally , something of the same sort could happen with the coronavirus pandemic as well .
Given the way news about it now dominates , even overwhelms , the present news agenda , this may seem unlikely , but there are precedents .
In 1918 , with World War I in progress , governments dealt with the pandemic by simply suppressing information about it .
Spain , as a noncombatant in that war , did not censor the news of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so the disease was most unfairly named “ the Spanish Flu , ” though it probably began in the United States .
The polio epidemic in Cork supposedly ended abruptly in mid-September 1956 when the local press stopped reporting on it , but that was at least two weeks before many children like me caught it .
In a similar fashion , right now , wars in the Middle East and Northern Africa like the ongoing disasters in Libya and Syria that once got significant coverage now barely get a mention much of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come , the same thing could happen to the coronavirus .

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.
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The struggle against Covid-19 has often been compared to fighting a war. Much of this rhetoric is bombast, but the similarities between the struggle against the virus and against human enemies are real enough. War reporting and pandemic reporting likewise have much in common because, in both cases, journalists are dealing with and describing matters of life and death. Public interest is fueled by deep fears, often more intense during an epidemic because the whole population is at risk. In a war, aside from military occupation and area bombing, terror is at its height among those closest to the battlefield.
The nature of the dangers stemming from military violence and the outbreak of a deadly disease may appear very different. But looked at from the point of view of a government, they both pose an existential threat because failure in either crisis may provoke some version of regime change. People seldom forgive governments that get them involved in losing wars or that fail to cope adequately with a natural disaster like the coronavirus. The powers-that-be know that they must fight for their political lives, perhaps even their physical existence, claiming any success as their own and doing their best to escape blame for what has gone wrong.
My First Pandemic
I first experienced a pandemic in the summer of 1956 when, at the age of 6, I caught polio in Cork, Ireland. The epidemic there began soon after virologist Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for it in the United States, but before it was available in Europe. Polio epidemics were at their height in the first half of the 20th century and, in a number of respects, closely resembled the Covid-19 experience: Many people caught the disease but only a minority were permanently disabled by or died of it. In contrast with Covid-19, however, it was young children, not the old, who were most at risk. The terror caused by poliomyelitis, to use its full name, was even higher than during the present epidemic exactly because it targeted the very young and its victims did not generally disappear into the cemetery but were highly visible on crutches and in wheelchairs, or prone in iron lungs.
Parents were mystified by the source of the illness because it was spread by great numbers of asymptomatic carriers who did not know they had it. The worst outbreaks were in the better-off parts of modern cities like Boston, Chicago, Copenhagen, Melbourne, New York, and Stockholm. People living there enjoyed a good supply of clean water and had effective sewage disposal, but did not realize that all of this robbed them of their natural immunity to the polio virus. The pattern in Cork was the same: Most of the sick came from the more affluent parts of the city, while people living in the slums were largely unaffected. Everywhere, there was a frantic search to identify those, like foreign immigrants, who might be responsible for spreading the disease. In the New York epidemic of 1916, even animals were suspected of doing so and 72,000 cats and 8,000 dogs were hunted down and killed.
The illness weakened my legs permanently and I have a severe limp so, even reporting in dangerous circumstances in the Middle East, I could only walk, not run. I was very conscious of my disabilities from the first, but did not think much about how I had acquired them or the epidemic itself until perhaps four decades later. It was the 1990s and I was then visiting ill-supplied hospitals in Iraq as that country’s health system was collapsing under the weight of UN sanctions. As a child, I had once been a patient in an almost equally grim hospital in Ireland and it occurred to me then, as I saw children in those desperate circumstances in Iraq, that I ought to know more about what had happened to me. At that time, my ignorance was remarkably complete. I did not even know the year when the polio epidemic had happened in Ireland, nor could I say if it was caused by a virus or a bacterium. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
So I read up on the outbreak in newspapers of the time and Irish Health Ministry files, while interviewing surviving doctors, nurses, and patients. Kathleen O’Callaghan, a doctor at St. Finbarr’s hospital, where I had been brought from my home when first diagnosed, said that people in the city were so frightened “they would cross the road rather than walk past the walls of the fever hospital.” My father recalled that the police had to deliver food to infected homes because no one else would go near them. A Red Cross nurse, Maureen O’Sullivan, who drove an ambulance at the time, told me that, even after the epidemic was over, people would quail at the sight of her ambulance, claiming “the polio is back again” and dragging their children into their houses or they might even fall to their knees to pray.
The local authorities in a poor little city like Cork where I grew up understood better than national governments today that fear is a main feature of epidemics. They tried then to steer public opinion between panic and complacency by keeping control of the news of the outbreak. When British newspapers like the Times reported that polio was rampant in Cork, they called this typical British slander and exaggeration. But their efforts to suppress the news never worked as well as they hoped. Instead, they dented their own credibility by trying to play down what was happening. In that pre-television era, the main source of information in my hometown was the Cork Examiner, which, after the first polio infections were announced at the beginning of July 1956, accurately reported on the number of cases, but systematically underrated their seriousness. Current Issue View our current issue
Headlines about polio like “Panic Reaction Without Justification” and “Outbreak Not Yet Dangerous” regularly ran below the fold on its front page. Above it were the screaming ones about the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian uprising of that year. In the end, this treatment only served to spread alarm in Cork where many people were convinced that the death toll was much higher than the officially announced one and that bodies were being secretly carried out of the hospitals at night.
My father said that, in the end, a delegation of local businessmen, the owners of the biggest shops, approached the owners of the Cork Examiner, threatening to withdraw their advertising unless it stopped reporting the epidemic. I was dubious about this story, but when I checked the newspaper files many years later, I found that he was correct and the paper had almost entirely stopped reporting on the epidemic just as sick children were pouring into St. Finbarr’s hospital.
The Misreporting of Wars and Epidemics
By the time I started to research a book about the Cork polio epidemic that would be titled Broken Boy, I had been reporting wars for 25 years, starting with the Northern Irish Troubles in the 1970s, then the Lebanese civil war, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the war that followed Washington’s post-9/11 takeover of Afghanistan, and the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. After publication of the book, I went on covering these endless conflicts for the British paper the Independent as well as new conflicts sparked in 2011 by the Arab Spring in Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
As the coronavirus pandemic began this January, I was finishing a book (just published), War in the Age of Trump: The Defeat of Isis, the Fall of the Kurds, the Confrontation with Iran. Almost immediately, I noticed strong parallels between the Covid-19 pandemic and the polio epidemic 64 years earlier. Pervasive fear was perhaps the common factor, though little grasped by governments of this moment. Boris Johnson’s in Great Britain, where I was living, was typical in believing that people had to be frightened into lockdown, when, in fact, so many were already terrified and needed to be reassured.
I also noticed ominous similarities between the ways in which epidemics and wars are misreported. Those in positions of responsibility—Donald Trump represents an extreme version of this—invariably claim victories and successes even as they fail and suffer defeats. The words of the Confederate general “Stonewall” Jackson came to mind. On surveying ground that had only recently been a battlefield, he asked an aide: “Did you ever think, sir, what an opportunity a battlefield affords liars?”
This has certainly been true of wars, but no less so, it seemed to me, of epidemics, as President Trump was indeed soon to demonstrate (over and over and over again). At least in retrospect, disinformation campaigns in wars tend to get bad press and be the subject of much finger wagging. But think about it a moment: It stands to reason that people trying to kill each other will not hesitate to lie about each other as well. While the glib saying that “truth is the first casualty of war” has often proven a dangerous escape hatch for poor reporting or unthinking acceptance of a self-serving version of battlefield realities (spoon-fed by the powers-that-be to a credulous media), it could equally be said that truth is the first casualty of pandemics. The inevitable chaos that follows in the wake of the swift spread of a deadly disease and the desperation of those in power to avoid being held responsible for the soaring loss of life lead in the same direction.
There is, of course, nothing inevitable about the suppression of truth when it comes to wars, epidemics, or anything else for that matter. Journalists, individually and collectively, will always be engaged in a struggle with propagandists and PR men, one in which victory for either side is never inevitable.
Unfortunately, wars and epidemics are melodramatic events and melodrama militates against real understanding. “If it bleeds, it leads” is true of news priorities when it comes to an intensive care unit in Texas or a missile strike in Afghanistan. Such scenes are shocking but do not necessarily tell us much about what is actually going on.
The recent history of war reporting is not encouraging. Journalists will always have to fight propagandists working for the powers-that-be. Sadly, I have had the depressing feeling since Washington’s first Gulf War, against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991, that the propagandists are increasingly winning the news battle and that accurate journalism, actual eyewitness reporting, is in retreat.
Disappearing News
By its nature, reporting wars is always going to be difficult and dangerous work, but it has become more so in these years. Coverage of Washington’s Afghan and Iraqi wars was often inadequate, but not as bad as the more recent reporting from war-torn Libya and Syria or its near total absence from the disaster that is Yemen. This lack fostered misconceptions even when it came to fundamental questions like who is actually fighting whom, for what reasons, and just who are the real prospective winners and losers.
Of course, there is little new about propaganda, controlling the news, or spreading “false facts.” Ancient Egyptian pharaohs inscribed self-glorifying and mendacious accounts of their battles on monuments, now thousands of years old, in which their defeats are lauded as heroic victories. What is new about war reporting in recent decades is the far greater sophistication and resources that governments can deploy in shaping the news. With opponents like longtime Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, demonization was never too difficult a task because he was a genuinely demonic autocrat.
Yet the most influential news story about the Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait in 1990 and the US-led counter-invasion proved to be a fake. This was a report that, in August 1990, invading Iraqi soldiers had tipped babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital and left them to die on the floor. A Kuwaiti girl reported to have been working as a volunteer in the hospital swore before a US congressional committee that she had witnessed that very atrocity. Her story was hugely influential in mobilizing international support for the war effort of the administration of President George H.W. Bush and the US allies he teamed up with.
In reality it proved purely fictional. The supposed hospital volunteer turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington. Several journalists and human rights specialists expressed skepticism at the time, but their voices were drowned out by the outrage the tale provoked. It was a classic example of a successful propaganda coup: instantly newsworthy, not easy to disprove, and when it was—long after the war—it had already had the necessary impact, creating support for the US-led coalition going to war with Iraq.
In a similar fashion, I reported on the American war in Afghanistan in 2001–02 at a time when coverage in the international media had left the impression that the Taliban had been decisively defeated by the US military and its Afghan allies. Television showed dramatic shots of bombs and missiles exploding on the Taliban front lines and Northern Alliance opposition forces advancing unopposed to “liberate” the Afghan capital, Kabul.
When, however, I followed the Taliban retreating south to Kandahar Province, it became clear to me that they were not by any normal definition a beaten force, that their units were simply under orders to disperse and go home. Their leaders had clearly grasped that they were overmatched and that it would be better to wait until conditions changed in their favor, something that had distinctly happened by 2006, when they went back to war in a big way. They then continued to fight in a determined fashion to the present day. By 2009, it was already dangerous to drive beyond the southernmost police station in Kabul due to the risk that Taliban patrols might create pop-up checkpoints anywhere along the road.
None of the wars I covered then have ever really ended. What has happened, however, is that they have largely ended up receding, if not disappearing, from the news agenda. I suspect that, if a successful vaccine for Covid-19 isn’t found and used globally, something of the same sort could happen with the coronavirus pandemic as well. Given the way news about it now dominates, even overwhelms, the present news agenda, this may seem unlikely, but there are precedents. In 1918, with World War I in progress, governments dealt with the pandemic by simply suppressing information about it. Spain, as a noncombatant in that war, did not censor the news of the outbreak in the same fashion and so the disease was most unfairly named “the Spanish Flu,” though it probably began in the United States.
The polio epidemic in Cork supposedly ended abruptly in mid-September 1956 when the local press stopped reporting on it, but that was at least two weeks before many children like me caught it. In a similar fashion, right now, wars in the Middle East and Northern Africa like the ongoing disasters in Libya and Syria that once got significant coverage now barely get a mention much of the time.
In the years to come, the same thing could happen to the coronavirus.


thenation--2020-08-07--Portraits of a Pandemic

Portraits of a Pandemic

EDITOR ’ S NOTE : The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis @ @ @ @ @ service .
For that reason , this article , and all of our coronavirus coverage @ @ @ @ @ Please subscribe to support our writers and staff , and stay healthy .
Over the @ @ @ @ @ have been drawing daily portraits of people affecting and affected by the Covid-19 pandemic .
@ @ @ @ @ will be a weekly feature at TheNation.com .

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.
This article appears in the August 24/31, 2020 issue.
Over the past five months, I have been drawing daily portraits of people affecting and affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Beginning August 14, they will be a weekly feature at TheNation.com.


thenation--2020-08-10--When Humans Make the Wilderness

When Humans Make the Wilderness

They arrived as if from another age , as if they remembered what had been there before the roads and buildings and cars .
Ducks walking in the empty streets of Paris , a herd of fallow deer grazing on lawns in East London ; buffalo walking along an empty highway in New Delhi.1 Over the past few months , the Covid-19 pandemic has frozen the world ’ s economy and forced half of humanity into confinement .
Amid the calamity—over half a million deaths , untold economic and social dislocation—some pointed to unprecedented opportunities : to try degrowth strategies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emissions .
The animal resurgence , in particular , captured the public imagination .
Many of us , clinging to the possibility of anything resembling a silver lining , were quick to share on social media these images of wildlife reasserting itself , like postcards from a possible future in which we might have finally learned a valuable lesson about our impact on the world we inhabit.2 There ’ s precedent for wildlife flourishing when humans are out of the picture .
Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster and the subsequent evacuation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home to a thriving population of wolves , bears , and bison and now hosts more than 200 bird species .
Now we are stricken with a pathogen that originated in animals ; nature seems to be defying human primacy like never before .
As the border between the categories we call civilization and the natural world dissolves , it ’ s time to ask ourselves , what is our responsibility to the creatures with which we share the planet ?
3 There ’ s a saying that God created the earth but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1968 , an expanse of land now called Flevoland , a few miles from Amsterdam , didn ’ t even exist ; for thousands of years , there was only the sea .
But in the Netherlands , human beings must negotiate with water , and thanks to an ambitious drainage plan put into place in the 1950s , the province emerged from the bottom of the North Sea.4 The part known today as the Oostvaardersplassen , or OVP , was initially intended for industry , but before the first building could sprout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Intrigued , a young ecologist named Frans Vera set out on an unprecedented ecological experiment : turning 14,800 barren acres into a place where , with the help of a few animals , nature would be restored to a long-forgotten preagricultural state.5 At the time , most scientists believed that in Europe and elsewhere , the natural world looked like a virgin forest and that open habitats like grasslands were the result of human labor .
All nature , the thinking went , eventually evolves into a closed forest when left to its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a role to play and that European wildlife once enjoyed a more diverse ecosystem , thanks to the presence of large now-extinct herbivores that roamed the continent hundreds of thousands of years ago .
Wild horses , bison , and aurochs had allowed the space to remain open and accommodate a vast biodiversity—and they could do so again , he believed .
God created the planet , and the Dutch created the Netherlands , but Vera would become the god of the OVP.7 To put his theory to the test , in 1983 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ breed of large wild ox bred to resemble aurochs ) to the Oostvaardersplassen .
Twenty koniks ( semiferal horses bred to approximate the tarpan , an extinct type of wild horse ) were added the next year and 44 red deer a few years later .
The idea was to let natural forces restore biodiversity without intervening .
This practice is now known as rewilding , a conservation method that , instead of protecting nature and what remains of it , aims to re-create extinct ecosystems without human interference through the reintroduction of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccinations or other medical interventions for the animals .
He wanted to see what happens when we simply let nature take its course.8 The Strange , Uncertain Fate of One of the World ’ s Most Valuable Salmon Habitats Rewilding is a way , as the philosopher Virginie Maris wrote , to “ limit the human empire ” in the so-called Anthropocene , the proposed geological epoch that begins with human activity ’ s first significant impacts on the planet .
Journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Fraser , the author of Rewilding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most exciting and promising ” method of nature conservation .
The best-known and most successful example of rewilding is in Yellowstone , where wolves were reintroduced in 1995 , resulting in a cascade of tremendous ecological benefits .
In Argentina and Chile , Tompkins Conservation , first led by the man who founded the North Face and Esprit brands , has carried out one of the largest rewilding projects on hundreds of thousands of acres bought from mostly absentee landowners , promoting the return of species like the wild llama and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even banal—a recent Guardian article encouraged homeowners to rewild their backyards—the Oostvaardersplassen is a controversial model .
It was only after Vera ’ s project began that conservation biologists formalized the principles of rewilding around the three Cs : cores , corridors , and carnivores .
Core reserves are the protected habitats .
However , carnivores ( the natural predators meant to regulate the ecosystem ) and corridors ( safe pathways between protected areas that allow migration ) are missing in the OVP .
And even though Vera paved the way for many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rhodope Mountains , there are some who view his project in the OVP , 40 years after it began , as an unmitigated disaster.10 Eddy Nagel , an animal rights activist , is among these outspoken critics .
“ I call it an experiment to make the strongest live and the weakest die , ” he says .
Most winter weekends , Nagel , 62 , illegally tosses 150 bales of hay over the fence surrounding the OVP , then trespasses in the middle of the night to feed animals he says are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ January , he and his frequent coconspirator , Bas Metzemaekers , also in his 60s , guided me through the part accessible to visitors—who are prohibited from leaving its trails—toward trees with gnawed bark : proof , for them , of the horses ’ famished condition.11 The pair ’ s investment in the project is astonishing .
During the winter , they go three or four times a week to the reserve to observe the animals , sometimes feeding them .
They ’ re not wild but domesticated animals , the men insist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oostvaardersplassen , we looked upon the expanse of grass and mud from which dark clouds of birds regularly take flight , with herds of cattle or horses here and there .
There are electric towers , wind turbines , and a yellow train from Amsterdam that passes by every five minutes with a bang .
The animals—wild or not—don ’ t seem to mind.12 Metzemaekers has been in police custody several times for his trespassing and has sat through multiple trials , most notably on charges of having made death threats against a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lies , lies !
” he swears . )
But he remains undeterred .
A blacksmith and hunter who grew up among farm animals , he was heartbroken by the sights he encountered at the OVP : a deer drowning amid ice , a wounded mare dying while giving birth , a toothless stallion .
“ And I ’ m not sentimental , not at all , ” he insists .
“ Let them take them to the butcher shop .
All of them .
I have the mentality of a farmer .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to raise animals to eat them .
I don ’ t have a problem with that .
My problem is the animals that are starving.
” Everything he sees gets cataloged and photographed as irrefutable evidence of the debacle happening at the OVP.13 Nagel and Metzemaekers were radicalized against the OVP in the winter of 2017–18 , or the “ winter of horror , ” as they remember it .
In this supposed paradise of biodiversity , thousands of skeletal animals roamed like zombies , hordes of mud-stained ghosts in search of any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gaze of the train passengers crossing the reserve .
That particularly harsh winter , 3,200 animals died , nearly 90 percent of them killed because they were deemed unfit to survive the winter .
The Dutch public , after years of eyeing the situation warily , turned decisively against the Oostvaardersplassen.14 For a while , the reserve—nicknamed the Dutch Serengeti—had been a source of national pride .
While the OVP ’ s fauna is admittedly less exotic to Europeans than Tanzania ’ s or Kenya ’ s , an impressive array of species @ @ @ @ @ @ @ predicted , including foxes , buzzards , goshawks , gray herons , kingfishers , kestrels , and even the white-tailed eagle , a variety not seen in the region since the Middle Ages .
Ecologists from all over the world looked with admiration at this exceptional wildlife reserve .
The handful of large herbivores introduced by Vera multiplied and grew .
But their freedom of movement is constrained by fences , and although he says wolves—a key species in preagricultural Europe—are welcome there , the area is too small to accommodate them.15 And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are an essential component of any ecosystem , where a stable population presupposes a balance between births and deaths .
In the absence of predators , deer , horses , and cows reproduced at an untenable rate , turning the Oostvaardersplassen into a monotonous grassland—a decline of biodiversity that drove away its impressive array of birds and small herbivores.16 In the wild , many creatures die from disease , wounds , starvation , or predation much more frequently than from old age .
Sometimes nature deals massive blows .
In 2015 , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan in a matter of weeks .
“ In sober truth , ” wrote the philosopher John Stuart Mill , “ nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature ’ s every-day performances.
” But when we ’ ve orchestrated the wilderness , must we then let it carry out its cruelty unimpeded ?
17 As gruesome images of the widespread animal deaths spread , opposition to the OVP started to take root .
In 2005 the president of the Dutch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a concentration camp , to a form of “ animal experimentation ” that must be abandoned .
Some years later , organized resistance groups mobilized to save the animals that remained .
Vera began receiving threats online.18 That year , the Dutch government commissioned an international committee of experts to find out whether it was possible for the OVP “ to maintain a resilient , self-sustaining ecosystem including large herbivores ” that was acceptable in terms of animal welfare .
To compensate for the reserve ’ s lack of carnivores , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be killed to avoid painful natural deaths .
It also recommended that shelters be created to protect the animals from the wind .
Humankind was reasserting control over the laws of nature.19 Five years later , a harsh winter meant a large number of animals had to be culled .
Images of the starving animals appeared on national television , provoking outrage that brought conditions at the OVP to the attention of the Dutch parliament .
After an emergency debate on the fate of the animals , the House of Representatives decided that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A new committee of experts declared “ a moral obligation for the managers [ of the OVP ] to take all necessary measures to minimize the extent of any unnecessary suffering ” and recommended killing “ the animals that are in visibly poor condition ” before the winter could batter them , in “ early reactive culling.
” But the new committee deemed parliament ’ s supplementary feeding mandate a “ political decision , ” contrary to the experts ’ advice .
“ In effect , ” they wrote , the feeding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the ecosystem , allowing herbivore populations to increase and stabilize at a new , higher level.
” As Vera told the journalist Isabella Tree , “ Starvation is the determining factor .
It is a fundamental process of nature .
” 20 Scientists are divided on the objectives of rewilding .
Should it—and can it—re-create a state of nature that existed before human influence , as in Siberia ’ s Pleistocene Park , where a Russian scientist and his son have approximated a mammoth steppe ecosystem of the earth ’ s last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ specific ecological damage caused by humans ?
Does “ wilderness ” instead refer to the idea of a natural process , of letting go , without a specific objective , of any given habitat , garden , forest , or urban area ?
If humanity is to limit its empire , where does it set those limits ?
21 The very concept of wilderness , seen as untouched nature , is a human invention .
In a 1995 New York Times essay , “ The Trouble With Wilderness , ” the environmental historian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural… .
If we allow ourselves to believe that nature , to be true , must also be wild , then our very presence in nature represents its fall.
” 22 The paradox of rewilding , a wilderness designed and conceived by people , is nowhere more blatant than at the OVP , where animals roam an artificial land , like a stage where one expects the spectacle of wildness .
But must we necessarily stand outside nature @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is more natural—a UNESCO reserve or a dandelion growing through the asphalt of a parking lot ?
23 “ The awareness that we are slowly growing into now is that the earthly wildness that we are so complexly dependent upon is at our mercy , ” wrote the activist Wendell Berry in the 1980s .
“ It has become , in a sense , our artifact because it can only survive by a human understanding and forbearance that we now must make .
The only thing we have to preserve nature with is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to preserve wildness with is domesticity.
” 24 Richard Powers on the Standing of Trees In an article for the scientific journal Nature , Ecology & Evolution , scientists termed this period of Covid-induced containment “ anthropause.
” Anthropause is , in part , a respite for nature , yet the cessation of human activities has exposed how much nature may need people in the Anthropocene .
Closures of national parks and widespread travel bans have meant a drop in financial support for all kinds of environmental operations .
In much of sub-Saharan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maintain the parks that protect wildlife .
Across Asia and Africa , reduced human presence and law enforcement in more remote areas have exposed endangered species to increased poaching .
The anthropause authors wrote , “ What is clear is that humans and wildlife have become more interdependent than ever before.
” 25 As Hans-Erik Kuypers , an OVP ranger , more bluntly puts it , “ Without man , the Oostvaardersplassen would not exist.
” Even the animals ’ DNA bears traces of human interference .
Take Heck ’ s aurochs , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Oostvaardersplassen in the hundreds .
The original aurochs , a muscular and aggressive wild ox , has the sad honor of being one of the first species recorded as extinct , in 1627 .
But in interwar Germany , the Heck brothers , who directed the Berlin and Munich zoos , selectively bred cattle in an attempt to genetically reengineer the species ; the project dovetailed with the Nazi quest to restore a racially pure Germanic past .
Both projects , of course , were chasing a myth : The oxen that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any purported state of unspoiled nature.26 The descendants of these herds were among the 3,200 casualties of the “ winter of horror , ” when protesters began to call the little Serengeti “ Auschwitz for animals.
” 27 “ It is…time to conclude that this experiment is gone out of control , ” read a petition launched in 2019 by the high-profile biologist Patrick Van Veen and signed by more than 200,000 people .
“ The State Forest Service claims to be a nature conservation organization , but what is different about this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ farm ?
” read the petition .
Even the legendary field biologist Jane Goodall got involved .
“ When I heard [ the OVP story ] , I could hardly believe that something like this would happen in a civilized country , ” she wrote in an open letter .
“ There is no excuse for the continuation of a policy of non-intervention when this results in horrific suffering.
” During demonstrations in front of the reserve , protesters held funeral processions and minutes of silence for the dead animals .
The threats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter targeting his grandchildren .
“ This letter had a huge impact on my family , ” he told a Dutch newspaper in January 2020 .
He soon removed himself from the public eye , but that did little to stop the protests.28 From this growing chorus of opposition to the OVP emerged Annemieke Van Straaten , the movement ’ s most vocal lobbyist .
She has opted for PR tactics over direct action .
Instead of bales of hay tossed over the fence in the middle of the night , she sends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the reserve and relays the news on Twitter in furious posts accompanied by vomiting emojis .
Overpopulation , she claims , leads to “ mare rapes.
” In the winter she posts a lot of photos of horses with their hair matted in clumps , with burdock fruit stuck like Velcro .
Van Straaten comes from the horse world , and for her , a happy horse is a horse in a field “ with people who take care of it every day , ” she says , and , presumably , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 she offered to buy 90 horses from the forest service that manages the reserve , without success.29 Politically , Van Straaten comes from the far right .
Her foundation is supported by the Party for Freedom and the Forum for Democracy , two hard-line right-wing parties .
She is critical of the ideology of the OVP ’ s founders , who are determined to continue their experiment .
“ They want to re-create an ancient nature , ” she says indignantly .
“ And for that , they receive subsidies from Europe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would like to empty OVP of most of its animals , including all of its horses .
Where to put them ?
“ That ’ s not my problem , ” she says .
“ But when you put animals behind fences , you have to take care of them.
” 31 The battle around the Oostvaardersplassen reflects a long-standing cultural and political tension between the two visions of nature .
“ Ever since the 19th century , celebrating wilderness has been an activity mainly for well-to-do city folks , ” Cronon wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know far too much about working the land to regard unworked land as their ideal.
” Sociological research has shown that in the Netherlands , appreciation for wilderness is greater in the city than in the countryside.32 “ That contradiction is reinforced in the current era , in which politicians are setting the elite and the people against each other , ” says Martin Drenthen , a philosopher and Oostvaardersplassen expert , noting that the OVP is routinely accused of being an elite ecological plaything .
This is reflected in the voting behavior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conservatively than areas with big cities .
Conservative parties such as the Christian Democratic Appeal , the People ’ s Party for Freedom and Democracy , and the Reformed Political Party are in favor of more active human involvement in the management of the reserve ; social democrats , the Green Party , and the Party for the Animals support a hands-off approach , although the Party for the Animals wrote that culling is the “ most animal-friendly solution.
” 33 At the mention of Van Straaten ’ s diatribes , Kuypers shrugs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eat all year round ?
I ’ m not sure , ” he says quietly .
He seems transported by the contact with nature , his face reddened forever by the north wind .
“ They tell us , ‘ You don ’ t like animals.
’ We respond , ‘ We love them as much as you do but in a different way.
’ We give them space and freedom .
It ’ s a different perspective.
” 34 For example , he explains , the burdock fruit clinging to the horses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Straaten ’ s nerves ) need animals as vehicles to disperse .
The seeds fall off on their own during the winter .
To him , they ’ re just further proof of an ecosystem that is working .
All the supporters of a wild OVP , free from human meddling , praise the quality of life of the animals and their freedom of movement and socialization .
In an interview with the Dutch daily De Volkskrant in January , Vera castigated the farmers who raise dairy cows that they kill after six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 20 , and horse lovers who “ sit on them.
” 35 And then there ’ s the question of fences .
The OVP ’ s critics liken the reserve to a camp that prevents emaciated animals from grazing elsewhere .
( Some activists once cut holes in the fences to let red deer escape ; some ended up on the highway and had to be shot . )
Ecologists , for their part , respond that all wild areas are bordered by some kind of natural barrier , like a river.36 The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should play in ending animal suffering most often concerns slaughterhouses , factory farming , and animal testing .
But now animal rights organizations , following in the footsteps of the influential utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer , are campaigning to alleviate the suffering of wild animals as well .
Why should our moral contract with domestic animals be any different with wild animals ?
Since humans already interfere extensively with nature for their benefit , why not direct this interference to the cessation of animal suffering ?
37 Some even dispute the idea that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the dangers are great , the stress level is high , and its natural needs are not necessarily satisfied .
“ There is a conflict between animal rights activists and environmentalists , ” says Drenthen .
The former focus on the fate and welfare of individual animals , he says , while the latter have a holistic perspective , focused on the flourishing of entire ecosystems.38 At the OVP , where this debate has been raging for decades , the answer has yet to be found .
Animal ethicists call ecologists ecofascists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ individual to preserve a system is tantamount to fascism ; ecologists reply that their ideological rivals are ecologically illiterate.39 The Dutch philosopher and animal ethicist Jozef Keulartz suggested that “ wild ” and “ domestic , ” rather than being fixed categories , exist on a continuum and that obligations of care should be calibrated according to an animal ’ s position on this spectrum .
In a 2017 lawsuit over whether the reserve was violating welfare laws regarding the treatment of domesticated animals , a Dutch appeals court granted the large herbivores @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ wild kept animals ” —whatever that might mean.40 Today the rangers at the Oostvaardersplassen call a veterinarian if they see an animal in distress .
But in practice , the rule seems unclear .
Why didn ’ t they call the vet for a fox that walked past us with a limp ?
“ Good question , ” says Kuypers with a smile .
Questions like these fit together like a chain of moral dilemmas .
Should we replace slaughter with contraception ?
But can ’ t procreation be considered an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it better to deprive them of this right than to kill surplus animals ?
41 “ It ’ s impossible to satisfy everyone , ” Kuypers concedes .
“ But one thing nature needs is continuity .
No policy changes every two years .
We need time to measure , to see what works , to adjust.
” 42 “ Conservation is about managing people .
It ’ s not about managing wildlife , ” Caroline Fraser quoted conservationist Joseph Kirathe as saying.43 The World ’ s Wilderness Is Nearly Gone Opponents of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mocked by scientists .
There are also hunters and the farm lobbies , angry to see this fertile land slipping away from them , and those who want an airport next door to finally open to commercial flights , despite the thousands of wild geese .
After minister Henk Bleker ’ s decision to decentralize Dutch nature policy in 2011 , the OVP ’ s future is being decided at the Flevoland provincial level , where these pressure groups are most influential .
As of 2018 , total animals had to be reduced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their condition .
A few horses were slaughtered , and 180 were evacuated to reserves in Belarus and Spain .
Deer were killed by the thousands ; their meat is now sold to gourmet restaurants , and top chefs have judged it to be exceptionally marbled , thanks to the quality of life these animals lead.44 “ It ’ s no longer reactive culling .
It ’ s hunting , ” says Drenthen .
Two guards who refused to kill healthy animals asked to be transferred.45 The following year , the court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The fate of the animals of the Oostvaardersplassen hangs on successive contradictory decisions .
To this day , the various parties continue to appeal to human justice to decide whether and how many deer should be culled.46 In this natural space , humans—their dreams , their battles , their shortsightedness , and above all , their financial motives—remain inescapable .
Even the proponents of rewilding use the economic argument , adopting a lexicon borrowed from the market , of a nature-based economy or an economy of contemplation.47 So it ’ s no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looms on the agenda .
It is about image , financing , compromise .
“ Sooner or later , ” says Drenthen , “ there will be holiday homes , cycle paths , and bird-watching huts.
” 48 After all , what good would this wilderness be if it can ’ t be admired by humans ?
49

This article appears in the August 24/31, 2020 issue.
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They arrived as if from another age, as if they remembered what had been there before the roads and buildings and cars. Ducks walking in the empty streets of Paris, a herd of fallow deer grazing on lawns in East London; buffalo walking along an empty highway in New Delhi.1
Over the past few months, the Covid-19 pandemic has frozen the world’s economy and forced half of humanity into confinement. Amid the calamity—over half a million deaths, untold economic and social dislocation—some pointed to unprecedented opportunities: to try degrowth strategies, end predatory tourism, or curb emissions. The animal resurgence, in particular, captured the public imagination. Many of us, clinging to the possibility of anything resembling a silver lining, were quick to share on social media these images of wildlife reasserting itself, like postcards from a possible future in which we might have finally learned a valuable lesson about our impact on the world we inhabit.2
There’s precedent for wildlife flourishing when humans are out of the picture. Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster and the subsequent evacuation of 350,000 people, the site has become home to a thriving population of wolves, bears, and bison and now hosts more than 200 bird species. Now we are stricken with a pathogen that originated in animals; nature seems to be defying human primacy like never before. As the border between the categories we call civilization and the natural world dissolves, it’s time to ask ourselves, what is our responsibility to the creatures with which we share the planet?3
There’s a saying that God created the earth but the Dutch created the Netherlands. Until 1968, an expanse of land now called Flevoland, a few miles from Amsterdam, didn’t even exist; for thousands of years, there was only the sea. But in the Netherlands, human beings must negotiate with water, and thanks to an ambitious drainage plan put into place in the 1950s, the province emerged from the bottom of the North Sea.4
The part known today as the Oostvaardersplassen, or OVP, was initially intended for industry, but before the first building could sprout, a wetland ecosystem emerged spontaneously. Intrigued, a young ecologist named Frans Vera set out on an unprecedented ecological experiment: turning 14,800 barren acres into a place where, with the help of a few animals, nature would be restored to a long-forgotten preagricultural state.5 Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
At the time, most scientists believed that in Europe and elsewhere, the natural world looked like a virgin forest and that open habitats like grasslands were the result of human labor. All nature, the thinking went, eventually evolves into a closed forest when left to its own devices.6
But Vera thought animals had a role to play and that European wildlife once enjoyed a more diverse ecosystem, thanks to the presence of large now-extinct herbivores that roamed the continent hundreds of thousands of years ago. Wild horses, bison, and aurochs had allowed the space to remain open and accommodate a vast biodiversity—and they could do so again, he believed. God created the planet, and the Dutch created the Netherlands, but Vera would become the god of the OVP.7
To put his theory to the test, in 1983 he introduced 34 Heck cattle (a breed of large wild ox bred to resemble aurochs) to the Oostvaardersplassen. Twenty koniks (semiferal horses bred to approximate the tarpan, an extinct type of wild horse) were added the next year and 44 red deer a few years later. The idea was to let natural forces restore biodiversity without intervening. This practice is now known as rewilding, a conservation method that, instead of protecting nature and what remains of it, aims to re-create extinct ecosystems without human interference through the reintroduction of key species. There would be no vaccinations or other medical interventions for the animals. He wanted to see what happens when we simply let nature take its course.8 Related Article The Strange, Uncertain Fate of One of the World’s Most Valuable Salmon Habitats Julia O’Malley
Rewilding is a way, as the philosopher Virginie Maris wrote, to “limit the human empire” in the so-called Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch that begins with human activity’s first significant impacts on the planet. Journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Fraser, the author of Rewilding the World, calls the practice “the most exciting and promising” method of nature conservation. The best-known and most successful example of rewilding is in Yellowstone, where wolves were reintroduced in 1995, resulting in a cascade of tremendous ecological benefits. In Argentina and Chile, Tompkins Conservation, first led by the man who founded the North Face and Esprit brands, has carried out one of the largest rewilding projects on hundreds of thousands of acres bought from mostly absentee landowners, promoting the return of species like the giant river macaw and the jaguar.9 Current Issue View our current issue
Although rewilding has become mainstream, even banal—a recent Guardian article encouraged homeowners to rewild their backyards—the Oostvaardersplassen is a controversial model. It was only after Vera’s project began that conservation biologists formalized the principles of rewilding around the three Cs: cores, corridors, and carnivores. Core reserves are the protected habitats. However, carnivores (the natural predators meant to regulate the ecosystem) and corridors (safe pathways between protected areas that allow migration) are missing in the OVP. And even though Vera paved the way for many successful experiments, from Croatia to the Rhodope Mountains, there are some who view his project in the OVP, 40 years after it began, as an unmitigated disaster.10
Eddy Nagel, an animal rights activist, is among these outspoken critics. “I call it an experiment to make the strongest live and the weakest die,” he says. Most winter weekends, Nagel, 62, illegally tosses 150 bales of hay over the fence surrounding the OVP, then trespasses in the middle of the night to feed animals he says are starving. Under a cold rain in January, he and his frequent coconspirator, Bas Metzemaekers, also in his 60s, guided me through the part accessible to visitors—who are prohibited from leaving its trails—toward trees with gnawed bark: proof, for them, of the horses’ famished condition.11
The pair’s investment in the project is astonishing. During the winter, they go three or four times a week to the reserve to observe the animals, sometimes feeding them. They’re not wild but domesticated animals, the men insist. From the road that bisects the Oostvaardersplassen, we looked upon the expanse of grass and mud from which dark clouds of birds regularly take flight, with herds of cattle or horses here and there. There are electric towers, wind turbines, and a yellow train from Amsterdam that passes by every five minutes with a bang. The animals—wild or not—don’t seem to mind.12
Metzemaekers has been in police custody several times for his trespassing and has sat through multiple trials, most notably on charges of having made death threats against a forest ranger. (“Lies, lies, lies!” he swears.) But he remains undeterred. A blacksmith and hunter who grew up among farm animals, he was heartbroken by the sights he encountered at the OVP: a deer drowning amid ice, a wounded mare dying while giving birth, a toothless stallion. “And I’m not sentimental, not at all,” he insists. “Let them take them to the butcher shop. All of them. I have the mentality of a farmer. For me, it’s normal to raise animals to eat them. I don’t have a problem with that. My problem is the animals that are starving.” Everything he sees gets cataloged and photographed as irrefutable evidence of the debacle happening at the OVP.13
Nagel and Metzemaekers were radicalized against the OVP in the winter of 2017–18, or the “winter of horror,” as they remember it. In this supposed paradise of biodiversity, thousands of skeletal animals roamed like zombies, hordes of mud-stained ghosts in search of any blade of grass, under the horrified gaze of the train passengers crossing the reserve. That particularly harsh winter, 3,200 animals died, nearly 90 percent of them killed because they were deemed unfit to survive the winter. The Dutch public, after years of eyeing the situation warily, turned decisively against the Oostvaardersplassen.14
For a while, the reserve—nicknamed the Dutch Serengeti—had been a source of national pride. While the OVP’s fauna is admittedly less exotic to Europeans than Tanzania’s or Kenya’s, an impressive array of species returned over the years, as Vera predicted, including foxes, buzzards, goshawks, gray herons, kingfishers, kestrels, and even the white-tailed eagle, a variety not seen in the region since the Middle Ages. Ecologists from all over the world looked with admiration at this exceptional wildlife reserve. The handful of large herbivores introduced by Vera multiplied and grew. But their freedom of movement is constrained by fences, and although he says wolves—a key species in preagricultural Europe—are welcome there, the area is too small to accommodate them.15
And that’s the rub: Predators are an essential component of any ecosystem, where a stable population presupposes a balance between births and deaths. In the absence of predators, deer, horses, and cows reproduced at an untenable rate, turning the Oostvaardersplassen into a monotonous grassland—a decline of biodiversity that drove away its impressive array of birds and small herbivores.16 Related Article The Extinction Crisis Devastating San Francisco Bay Jimmy Tobias
In the wild, many creatures die from disease, wounds, starvation, or predation much more frequently than from old age. Sometimes nature deals massive blows. In 2015, for example, a bacterium wiped out 200,000 saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan in a matter of weeks. “In sober truth,” wrote the philosopher John Stuart Mill, “nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature’s every-day performances.” But when we’ve orchestrated the wilderness, must we then let it carry out its cruelty unimpeded?17
As gruesome images of the widespread animal deaths spread, opposition to the OVP started to take root. In 2005 the president of the Dutch Council on Animal Affairs compared the situation to a concentration camp, to a form of “animal experimentation” that must be abandoned. Some years later, organized resistance groups mobilized to save the animals that remained. Vera began receiving threats online.18
That year, the Dutch government commissioned an international committee of experts to find out whether it was possible for the OVP “to maintain a resilient, self-sustaining ecosystem including large herbivores” that was acceptable in terms of animal welfare. To compensate for the reserve’s lack of carnivores, the committee determined that the weaker animals should be killed to avoid painful natural deaths. It also recommended that shelters be created to protect the animals from the wind. Humankind was reasserting control over the laws of nature.19
Five years later, a harsh winter meant a large number of animals had to be culled. Images of the starving animals appeared on national television, provoking outrage that brought conditions at the OVP to the attention of the Dutch parliament. After an emergency debate on the fate of the animals, the House of Representatives decided that rangers were mandated to feed large herbivores. A new committee of experts declared “a moral obligation for the managers [of the OVP] to take all necessary measures to minimize the extent of any unnecessary suffering” and recommended killing “the animals that are in visibly poor condition” before the winter could batter them, in “early reactive culling.” But the new committee deemed parliament’s supplementary feeding mandate a “political decision,” contrary to the experts’ advice. “In effect,” they wrote, the feeding “simply increases the winter carrying capacity of the ecosystem, allowing herbivore populations to increase and stabilize at a new, higher level.” As Vera told the journalist Isabella Tree, “Starvation is the determining factor. It is a fundamental process of nature. ”20
Scientists are divided on the objectives of rewilding. Should it—and can it—re-create a state of nature that existed before human influence, as in Siberia’s Pleistocene Park, where a Russian scientist and his son have approximated a mammoth steppe ecosystem of the earth’s last glacial period? Or should it repair specific ecological damage caused by humans? Does “wilderness” instead refer to the idea of a natural process, of letting go, without a specific objective, of any given habitat, garden, forest, or urban area? If humanity is to limit its empire, where does it set those limits?21
The very concept of wilderness, seen as untouched nature, is a human invention. In a 1995 New York Times essay, “The Trouble With Wilderness,” the environmental historian William Cronon wrote, “Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural…. If we allow ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall.”22
The paradox of rewilding, a wilderness designed and conceived by people, is nowhere more blatant than at the OVP, where animals roam an artificial land, like a stage where one expects the spectacle of wildness. But must we necessarily stand outside nature for nature to be authentic? What is more natural—a UNESCO reserve or a dandelion growing through the asphalt of a parking lot?23
“The awareness that we are slowly growing into now is that the earthly wildness that we are so complexly dependent upon is at our mercy,” wrote the activist Wendell Berry in the 1980s. “It has become, in a sense, our artifact because it can only survive by a human understanding and forbearance that we now must make. The only thing we have to preserve nature with is culture; the only thing we have to preserve wildness with is domesticity.”24 Related Article Richard Powers on the Standing of Trees Zoë Carpenter
In an article for the scientific journal Nature, Ecology & Evolution, scientists termed this period of Covid-induced containment “anthropause.” Anthropause is, in part, a respite for nature, yet the cessation of human activities has exposed how much nature may need people in the Anthropocene. Closures of national parks and widespread travel bans have meant a drop in financial support for all kinds of environmental operations. In much of sub-Saharan Africa, tourism provides the money to maintain the parks that protect wildlife. Across Asia and Africa, reduced human presence and law enforcement in more remote areas have exposed endangered species to increased poaching. The anthropause authors wrote, “What is clear is that humans and wildlife have become more interdependent than ever before.”25
As Hans-Erik Kuypers, an OVP ranger, more bluntly puts it, “Without man, the Oostvaardersplassen would not exist.” Even the animals’ DNA bears traces of human interference. Take Heck’s aurochs, which now populate the dull plain of the Oostvaardersplassen in the hundreds. The original aurochs, a muscular and aggressive wild ox, has the sad honor of being one of the first species recorded as extinct, in 1627. But in interwar Germany, the Heck brothers, who directed the Berlin and Munich zoos, selectively bred cattle in an attempt to genetically reengineer the species; the project dovetailed with the Nazi quest to restore a racially pure Germanic past. Both projects, of course, were chasing a myth: The oxen that emerged had little to do—genetically or otherwise—with any purported state of unspoiled nature.26
The descendants of these herds were among the 3,200 casualties of the “winter of horror,” when protesters began to call the little Serengeti “Auschwitz for animals.”27
“It is…time to conclude that this experiment is gone out of control,” read a petition launched in 2019 by the high-profile biologist Patrick Van Veen and signed by more than 200,000 people. “The State Forest Service claims to be a nature conservation organization, but what is different about this nature reserve from a zoo or a farm?” read the petition. Even the legendary field biologist Jane Goodall got involved. “When I heard [the OVP story], I could hardly believe that something like this would happen in a civilized country,” she wrote in an open letter. “There is no excuse for the continuation of a policy of non-intervention when this results in horrific suffering.” During demonstrations in front of the reserve, protesters held funeral processions and minutes of silence for the dead animals. The threats against Vera intensified. He received a letter targeting his grandchildren. “This letter had a huge impact on my family,” he told a Dutch newspaper in January 2020. He soon removed himself from the public eye, but that did little to stop the protests.28
From this growing chorus of opposition to the OVP emerged Annemieke Van Straaten, the movement’s most vocal lobbyist. She has opted for PR tactics over direct action. Instead of bales of hay tossed over the fence in the middle of the night, she sends out six people to document abuses on the reserve and relays the news on Twitter in furious posts accompanied by vomiting emojis. Overpopulation, she claims, leads to “mare rapes.” In the winter she posts a lot of photos of horses with their hair matted in clumps, with burdock fruit stuck like Velcro. Van Straaten comes from the horse world, and for her, a happy horse is a horse in a field “with people who take care of it every day,” she says, and, presumably, an untangled mane and tail. In January 2019 she offered to buy 90 horses from the forest service that manages the reserve, without success.29
Politically, Van Straaten comes from the far right. Her foundation is supported by the Party for Freedom and the Forum for Democracy, two hard-line right-wing parties. She is critical of the ideology of the OVP’s founders, who are determined to continue their experiment. “They want to re-create an ancient nature,” she says indignantly. “And for that, they receive subsidies from Europe!”30
Ultimately, Van Straaten would like to empty OVP of most of its animals, including all of its horses. Where to put them? “That’s not my problem,” she says. “But when you put animals behind fences, you have to take care of them.”31
The battle around the Oostvaardersplassen reflects a long-standing cultural and political tension between the two visions of nature. “Ever since the 19th century, celebrating wilderness has been an activity mainly for well-to-do city folks,” Cronon wrote, adding that rural people “generally know far too much about working the land to regard unworked land as their ideal.” Sociological research has shown that in the Netherlands, appreciation for wilderness is greater in the city than in the countryside.32
“That contradiction is reinforced in the current era, in which politicians are setting the elite and the people against each other,” says Martin Drenthen, a philosopher and Oostvaardersplassen expert, noting that the OVP is routinely accused of being an elite ecological plaything. This is reflected in the voting behavior of the province, which votes more conservatively than areas with big cities. Conservative parties such as the Christian Democratic Appeal, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, and the Reformed Political Party are in favor of more active human involvement in the management of the reserve; social democrats, the Green Party, and the Party for the Animals support a hands-off approach, although the Party for the Animals wrote that culling is the “most animal-friendly solution.”33
At the mention of Van Straaten’s diatribes, Kuypers shrugs. “Does an animal have to eat all year round? I’m not sure,” he says quietly. He seems transported by the contact with nature, his face reddened forever by the north wind. “They tell us, ‘You don’t like animals.’ We respond, ‘We love them as much as you do but in a different way.’ We give them space and freedom. It’s a different perspective.”34
For example, he explains, the burdock fruit clinging to the horses’ hair (and grating on Van Straaten’s nerves) need animals as vehicles to disperse. The seeds fall off on their own during the winter. To him, they’re just further proof of an ecosystem that is working. All the supporters of a wild OVP, free from human meddling, praise the quality of life of the animals and their freedom of movement and socialization. In an interview with the Dutch daily De Volkskrant in January, Vera castigated the farmers who raise dairy cows that they kill after six years, when they could live for 20, and horse lovers who “sit on them.”35
And then there’s the question of fences. The OVP’s critics liken the reserve to a camp that prevents emaciated animals from grazing elsewhere. (Some activists once cut holes in the fences to let red deer escape; some ended up on the highway and had to be shot.) Ecologists, for their part, respond that all wild areas are bordered by some kind of natural barrier, like a river.36
The larger debate on the role that humans should play in ending animal suffering most often concerns slaughterhouses, factory farming, and animal testing. But now animal rights organizations, following in the footsteps of the influential utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer, are campaigning to alleviate the suffering of wild animals as well. Why should our moral contract with domestic animals be any different with wild animals? Since humans already interfere extensively with nature for their benefit, why not direct this interference to the cessation of animal suffering?37
Some even dispute the idea that an animal is happier in nature, where the dangers are great, the stress level is high, and its natural needs are not necessarily satisfied. “There is a conflict between animal rights activists and environmentalists,” says Drenthen. The former focus on the fate and welfare of individual animals, he says, while the latter have a holistic perspective, focused on the flourishing of entire ecosystems.38
At the OVP, where this debate has been raging for decades, the answer has yet to be found. Animal ethicists call ecologists ecofascists on the grounds that willingly sacrificing an individual to preserve a system is tantamount to fascism; ecologists reply that their ideological rivals are ecologically illiterate.39
The Dutch philosopher and animal ethicist Jozef Keulartz suggested that “wild” and “domestic,” rather than being fixed categories, exist on a continuum and that obligations of care should be calibrated according to an animal’s position on this spectrum. In a 2017 lawsuit over whether the reserve was violating welfare laws regarding the treatment of domesticated animals, a Dutch appeals court granted the large herbivores of the OVP a specific intermediate status of “wild kept animals”—whatever that might mean.40
Today the rangers at the Oostvaardersplassen call a veterinarian if they see an animal in distress. But in practice, the rule seems unclear. Why didn’t they call the vet for a fox that walked past us with a limp? “Good question,” says Kuypers with a smile. Questions like these fit together like a chain of moral dilemmas. Should we replace slaughter with contraception? But can’t procreation be considered an animal right? Yet isn’t it better to deprive them of this right than to kill surplus animals?41
“It’s impossible to satisfy everyone,” Kuypers concedes. “But one thing nature needs is continuity. No policy changes every two years. We need time to measure, to see what works, to adjust.”42
“Conservation is about managing people. It’s not about managing wildlife,” Caroline Fraser quoted conservationist Joseph Kirathe as saying.43 Related Article The World’s Wilderness Is Nearly Gone Michelle Chen
Opponents of the OVP are not limited to equestrians mocked by scientists. There are also hunters and the farm lobbies, angry to see this fertile land slipping away from them, and those who want an airport next door to finally open to commercial flights, despite the thousands of wild geese. After minister Henk Bleker’s decision to decentralize Dutch nature policy in 2011, the OVP’s future is being decided at the Flevoland provincial level, where these pressure groups are most influential. As of 2018, total animals had to be reduced to no more than 1,100, regardless of their condition. A few horses were slaughtered, and 180 were evacuated to reserves in Belarus and Spain. Deer were killed by the thousands; their meat is now sold to gourmet restaurants, and top chefs have judged it to be exceptionally marbled, thanks to the quality of life these animals lead.44
“It’s no longer reactive culling. It’s hunting,” says Drenthen. Two guards who refused to kill healthy animals asked to be transferred.45
The following year, the court barred further mass culling of red deer. The fate of the animals of the Oostvaardersplassen hangs on successive contradictory decisions. To this day, the various parties continue to appeal to human justice to decide whether and how many deer should be culled.46
In this natural space, humans—their dreams, their battles, their shortsightedness, and above all, their financial motives—remain inescapable. Even the proponents of rewilding use the economic argument, adopting a lexicon borrowed from the market, of a nature-based economy or an economy of contemplation.47
So it’s no surprise that in the Oostvaardersplassen, tourism looms on the agenda. It is about image, financing, compromise. “Sooner or later,” says Drenthen, “there will be holiday homes, cycle paths, and bird-watching huts.”48
After all, what good would this wilderness be if it can’t be admired by humans?49