Why Did the Bear Cross the Road? For Health Care

I just returned from a vista-on-steroids trip from Vancouver to Calgary, with stunning views of rivers, deserts and mountains from train, helicopter and roadside. Fabulous memories and photos -- but from all of them, one image stands out.

It’s the view of several animal crossings being built across the trans-Canadian highway near Banff.

The crossings look pretty much like any other bridge built to carry a local road over a highway -- except that they’re for animal roads. They carry not asphalt, but earth and vegetation. The road down their middle is buried below the edges, so animals can’t see the gas-powered people traffic beneath them as they cross on their own roads.

Built for deer, moose, porcupines, marmots, bears, bighorn sheep, ground squirrels and other inhabitants of the neighborhood, the bridges prevent cars from crashing into moose on the highway -- something good for neither moose nor car.

But roadkill prevention alone could be handled just by fences. More broadly, the bridges keep the highways from dissecting ecologically integrated communities into fragmented pieces. Animals require certain geographic ranges of movement to sustain themselves as a population. In communities like Banff, the delicate balance between town garbage regulations, coyotes, wolves, bears, bobcats and dogs makes clear the lessons of interdependence between all creatures and their ecosystems.

Why should a Canadian living in Nova Scotia give a damn whether a deer crosses the highway in Alberta? Why should an Albertan care, for that matter? The only answer is, because they have evolved a society that grants social permission for the collective care and feeding of the interdependencies that underlie society.

Granted, those of us in urban US environments can also cite extraordinary examples of social interdependence. Cities don’t work without massive social recognition of the need to get along together.

But the animal bridges provide a counterpoint to the current health care debate in the US. If the Canadians can recognize and act upon -- at a Federal level -- the value of protecting inter-species interdependence, why can’t their neighbors to the south figure out the value of providing universal basic health care coverage to their own species?

Evolved social structures -- including trust -- have to begin with the recognition that we're all in this together. August vacation time is a good time to remember the interdependencies that make trust so valuable.

Follow Charles H. Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/charleshgreen

Comments

[rf dude]

Great! Now Gladly can cross the road,

even though the bear has a vision problem (he's cross-eyed)...
--

[MAH999]

The sad thing is that I've watched this transformation take place. In one incomplete lifetime. 60 years old. Gone from the sense of hope and opportunity for all in the early 60's to the greed and avarice that the Repubican party has been promulgating since the Reagan era. Unfortunatley, I got to witness Reagan for 16 years, 8 while he destroyed California, the natural and predicted outcome playing out there now. Somehow he convinced people they had more in common with rich people than the common man. It's amazing to watch people vote against their best interests time after time out of the fear that somewhere someone will get a break. Reagan convinced people to be more worried about the fabled welfare queen in a Cadillac than the corporations hiding their proftis offshore. He knew how to bring out the worst in us.

[S1m0n]

You want 'bisecting', not 'dissecting', Charles. It may be cars that dissect wildlife, but its roads that bisect habitat.

[Charles H. Green - Huffpost Blogger]

I thought of dissect vs. bisect, but kept the former; reason being bi-sect means break into two. Multiple roads can create way more than two divisions, a point I tried to emphasize by including 'into multiple pieces.' But hey, you're probably right, and in any case I appreciate the time and literate attention!

[sociocanuck]

What's really remarkable is that the federal government here in Canada is a Conservative one. In many ways, there's very little difference between them and Republicans. It's more that the system of our government provides checks against their going wildly overboard and influencing the totality of public policy. Even when a party is supposedly "in power" they have to recognize they got there only with about 35% of public support. That goes for Conservatives or the Liberal Party (no, they're not "Liberals").

If you dug deeper you'd find that most (even minor) bills and directives to do with healthcare or environmental policy carry the influence of 'minor' parties in Parliament because of their status as holding the balance of power. The NDP does this frequently, and with just reason.

[S1m0n]

The Alberta provincial government has been solidly conservative since the depression (yet the Alberta voters, weirdly, think they're all 'free thinkers'), but the present federal government has been a conservative minority only for three or so years. Prior to that, we'd had three Liberal (centrists, in Canada) majorities and one minority, dating back almost to the eighties.

Banff is in Alberta, but both the transcanada highway and Banff National park (which the highway crosses en route to Rogers' Pass) are Federal responsibilities. The wildlife overpasses predate the present conservative government.

[sociocanuck]

True enough. I wasn't precisely connecting the current government to this effort; if anything it must have roots on the Liberal governments beforehand.

I'd argue then that the 'Liberal' Party is way Right of Center rather than Centrist, and that it is only fear of comparisons to Harper's party that keep them (occasionally) honest, but that's all relative semantics and personal opinion.

[Gary50]

Canadians care more for their wildlife than Republicans care for human beings. Oh crap, I forgot the old rule, "never state the obvious."