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particularly in wealthy countries, “wilderness” is almost by definition every place that is not civilization. For millennia, humans have domesticated nature to build cities and towns, suburbs and farms, and whatever is wild is meant to remain outside, at the border. However, inevitably and without fail, conflicts arise because wild animals are curious, or hungry, and they don’t necessarily recognize the boundaries we put up; once they enter our domestic arena, wild animals are often considered dangerous “problems” or “pests” for whom the only solution is death. Conflicts also arise whenever humans themselves seek to live in or “manage” wilderness, arranging the furniture in what is, in reality, someone else’s home.
    In other words, it’s very easy for humans to love domestic animals, who have learned to live and play by human rules, but it’s much harder to coexist with the majority of animal species who don’t. Those of us who live in wealthy countries make up a small fraction of the world’s population, and we are incredibly fortunate to live with an amazing array of animals andplants. We should never take this for granted because it may not always be so. In theory, when humans make conservation and environmental decisions regarding nature, most people agree that animals must be factored in; they are part of the equation. Yet when push comes to shove — when profits are compromised or people’s lives are impacted or threatened — the welfare of our fellow animals seems to count for nothing.
    Thus, any manifesto on behalf of animals would demand that animals be granted their own homes and allowed their own ways of life. Animals deserve land free from human interference and intrusion. Coexistence means not only that animals must accommodate human society, which they already do (sometimes to the point of extinction), but that humans must accommodate, and make room for, animal societies. Ironically, often the very characteristics of animals that draw us to them, or to the land where they live, become the source of conflicts and the reasons we decide we don’t like them anymore. Often people like to brag that they live in the woods among wild animals, but they’re only happy as long as the animals behave as humans want them to, not as the beings they are. We misunderstand wild animals, or provoke them unwittingly, then blame and punish them for our own mistakes.
    This is seen most dramatically, and usually tragically, whenever wild animals enter our towns. In January 2009 a coyote in a town near Boulder supposedly attacked a woman who had been playing Frisbee with her dog. The question is, did the coyote aggressively “attack” the woman or was the animal just trying to join the game? When I played fetch with my late companion dog Jethro, the local red foxes would on occasion try to play with us; whenever this happened, I stopped the game, because I don’t want foxes to feel that comfortablearound us. Wild animals can be unpredictable; we don’t speak their language or understand all their signals. As an expert in animal behavior, I know an animal’s motivation isn’t always obvious or self-evident. People often label an animal as “aggressive” when in fact he or she is merely curious. Nonetheless, the Colorado Division of Wildlife (CDOW) immediately went out to kill the coyotes who had been “harassing” the woman. A group of us protested this because, first, they couldn’t identify exactly who the coyotes were, and second, it was far from clear that they had been aggressive. As it turned out, CDOW killed a coyote who didn’t nip the woman! Then, a few weeks later, CDOW killed five more coyotes in what they called a precautionary measure. Wildlife officials had no idea if any of the coyotes were involved in the incident, but afterward, simply being a coyote apparently warranted a death sentence.
The Bear Who Came to Dinner
    In July 2008 the lives and unnecessary deaths of two black bears