Hammer Test

Abstract

Hammer Test Renata Golden (bio) Imagine a spectrum of living creatures. At one end are viruses, bacteria, paramecia. Add invertebrates like worms, snails, octopuses, and shrimp. In the middle, find spiders, crabs, and small animals like frogs, snakes, and songbirds. Somewhere toward the opposite end stand the bigger creatures like prairie dogs, house cats, wolves, alligators, and whales. Holding down the far end are humans—not because of their size or evolutionary superiority, but because of their claim to a moral code. Now picture yourself holding a very large metaphoric hammer that can take many shapes—revulsion, fear, hunger, defense, medical research, vivisection, euthanasia, capital punishment. That hammer represents your willingness to kill. How far along that continuum will you bring your hammer down? Squashing a bug is probably okay, especially if it is a spider or a cockroach or other creepy crawly that freaks you out. And you might be willing to catch a mouse in a snap trap if it’s in your kitchen, eating the crumbs in your dark corners. If you’re an omnivore, you let others butcher your dinner, unless you fish or hunt your own food. Where do you draw the line about killing living things, whether you actually do the deed or support others doing the killing in your name? According to national Gallup and Pew polls, fifty to sixty percent of American adults go all the way to support the death penalty. Where do you stop? [End Page 7] I was unsure of my own answer to that question, especially when I considered threatened species and their preservation. In a natural world made unnatural by human intervention, my ethical responsibilities have grown murky. In my view, a species doesn’t need to provide an obvious benefit to mankind—or even to the rest of the natural world—to be worth saving. Its value lies in the mere fact of its existence. I have heard it said that allowing a species to go extinct is like ripping pages out of a book that you are still reading. What do we lose when a species disappears? What do we suffer when we are the cause of that extinction? And what am I willing to do, either actively or passively, to affect the outcome one way or another? The first good look I had at an American bullfrog in the Chiricahua Mountains was in the sights of a .22 rifle. I had accompanied a biologist and his field technician—let’s call them John and Bob—to a pond that had potential to be a safe harbor for Chiricahua leopard frogs. John and Bob had been monitoring this pond in the flatlands east of Cave Creek Canyon for months. This morning, the two men started at the bottom of a pond and counted eyes as they circled to the top. They estimated more than 500 bullfrogs. They knew the frogs were bullfrogs and not leopard frogs because their size and the chirp they made when they jumped into the water were dead giveaways. John and Bob were on a mission to eradicate some bullfrogs. I found it ironic that they needed to kill a frog to save a frog. With hundreds of bullfrogs living in this flatlands pond, it was obviously not yet ready to receive the leopard frog tadpoles or egg masses that were ready for release. Tasked by U.S. Fish and Wildlife to eradicate the bullfrogs that make life impossible for Chiricahua leopard frogs, John and Bob intended not to kill every American bullfrog in southeastern Arizona, but to establish a buffer zone around Cave Creek where the leopard frogs could thrive. If Chiricahua leopard frogs can’t be returned to their entire previous range, they can at least be saved from extinction. The first step was to give them a suitable home. Before I came to the Southwest Research Station in the Chiricahua Mountains in 2016 to learn about the reintroduction of Chiricahua leopard frogs to their homeland, I had read that Chiricahua leopard frogs and [End Page 8] American bullfrogs are incompatible. Perhaps that’s not the right word—“incompatible” makes it seem like they argue a lot or have...