Ecology, War, and how you should consider opposing viewpoints

War is not something people usually associate with animals. They usually associate it with the brutalization or killing of the human race. Douglas Adams, though, takes on what others usually will not, and goes there. In his book, Last Chance to see, Adams Writes, “Ecologically speaking, Mauritius is a war zone and Carl, Richard, and others – including Wendy Strahm… are like surgeons working just behind the front line”(183). He is comparing the area with which the conservations work, Mauritius, to a war zone, and the conservationists working there to soldiers. Adams does this to prove a point. Many people see things with blinders on and only see what is straight ahead of them. They do not take time to think about other cultures or animals, and only consider the human race. Adams wants you to be more like the soldiers though, or conservationists. He wants you to see the “enormity of the problems facing them, and the speed with which these problems are escalating”(183). That is why he is blatantly putting it out there like that. He wants you to consider the lives of animals, and take the blinder off and see a side of animals and people you have never seen before. In another chapter he talks about the assumptions people make. Now he wants people to get rid of these assumptions and see things from a different perspective. Adams knows that his readers might think it is absolutely ridiculous to save birds such as the Philippines’ Monkey-eating eagle, who “you would more readily expect to see coming into land on an aircraft carrier than nesting in a tree,”(183) yet Adams still wants his readers to see that the people helping this bird, such as Richard, are just soldiers doing what they are trained to do, and that you should support them in this, even if you will not even consider changing your viewpoint on these animals who are going extinct. His view point is probably a little extreme, but it is so that people will realize the dire problem facing these ecologists, and hopefully at least think about their views. If people do, they can potentially stop the next animal from going extinct, and stop humans from brining the same problem we face in Mauritius to America.