As time goes by rapidly, here we are in June 2018.

About one year after the terrible wildfires that devastated many areas of Europe and North America during Summer 2017.

To honour the memory and with the hope of creating awareness, I will propose a few posts including some writings from the field, collected during the emergency animal rescue actions in Portugal and then posted on Portugal Focus Animal Help.
I believe some posts are still worth to read.

As far as we keep thinking to ourselves as non-animals, we are improving the dichotomy between human and other species. As far as we believe to be more special than other animals we are increasing the separation between our species and nature.

With all the various perception we have about other-than-human animals, we (humans) struggle a lot in framing the importance that animals have in our lives. For example, to which degree they can be part of our life? How much space do they deserve? What’s their function in supporting our activities? And so on.

All of these questions have as a centre “we”, humans, and unavoidably they end up to be anthropocentric.

In this sense, the human logic justifies the priority of providing help, in a situation of emergency, for human animals versus other animals.
We humans (often) perceive ourselves as distinguished by the whole.

When there is a fire, for example, or an earthquake, we do not make the distinction between a middle age person in need of help and a young person in need of help, and we want to help both if they are in danger, right? Though, we may make a distinction between species. We do not just give priority to humans, but we also give priority to some animals compared to others. On the one hand, that is essential since it structures our response within a particular situation. However, we need to look at the limitations of that way of framing things.

We don’t need to struggle so much in deciding who to save and who do not leave behind. We need to go toward animals. It is about reminding we being as part of them and rediscovering ourselves as animals among other animals.

Whit this in mind, maybe, it’s easier to perceive the importance of supporting every animal indiscriminately, during a natural disaster. We do not need to struggle with choosing just some. A kid over an old man? A cat over a chicken? A man over a deer?
The best effort we can do is to include every leaving being in our action, because, ultimately, do we accept it or not, we are all part of the same kingdom.

Would things be framed this way, governments and organisations could maybe improve their effort for supporting the whole living community in need of help, not leaving ANYBODY behind.