Unit 6 (Mijbil the Otter)
People, wildlife and animal rights
Explain human-wildlife conflict and the idea of animal rights.
Why people and animals clash. Towns and farms keep spreading, and wild places shrink. Animals and people end up competing for space and food: elephants raid crops in Nepal, baboons in Namibia, bears and wolves kill livestock in Europe. People lose crops, livestock, income and sometimes lives. Animals, some of them rare, are killed in revenge. Climate change will probably make it worse.
Solutions that help both sides. Elephants dislike chilli. A barrier of chilli plants keeps them away from the crops, and the farmers can sell the chilli. Nobody gets hurt and the farmer earns. Read the true/false options carefully: the passage says people can live alongside wildlife; it does not say they always live together happily.
The animal-rights passage. This text is from PETA, a group that campaigns for animals. Read it as the writer's argument, something to think about and discuss, not a rule you must follow. Its main points:
- animals have inherent worth: value of their own, apart from how useful they are to us;
- they have the right not to suffer at human hands or be exploited;
- there is no good reason to treat pets kindly and farm animals differently;
- people show this in their choices of food, clothes and products.
Families make different choices about food. In class, discuss the argument fairly.
Equal consideration is not equal treatment. 'Equal consideration' means an animal's wish not to suffer counts as much as ours. It does not mean treating animals the same as people: nobody says a dog should vote or drive.
Answer carefully. Questions here often ask which statement is not true. Check each option against the passage word by word.
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