Human and animal relationships

Earth is the only planet in the solar system that can sustain life. But in the past century, we have seen the degradation of nature because of industrialization. Human ingenuity is a marvel, but does it have to be the cause of animal extinction?

For this issue, we asked our writers,

Can humans and animals truly live peacefully together? Why or why not?

Of course, we can! Many tribes and first-nations groups have coexisted peacefully with wild animals for centuries.

I recently visited East Africa’s Maasai Tribe, which is one of the few tribes allowed by the governments of Kenya and Tanzania to reside within African national parks. The Maasai rarely hunt wild animals: they mostly live on a combination of corn and the milk of the cattle they herd — proof-ofconcept that people and animals can live in peace.