I was introduced to Elan Abrell's "Saving Animals: Multispecies Ecologies of Rescue and Care" through my participation in VINE Sanctuary's monthly book club. I knew it was an academic book, but was not sure exactly what to expect having not read this author before. I found the writing style to be more accessible than average for this type of text. The design of the book with fantastic photography peppered throughout is engaging. Most informative for me were the topics discussed therein.
I have known for a long time that rescue of any kind is very hard work. Some people imagine rescue and related work is this odd fantasy where all you do all day is cuddle animals and that space for new ones is unlimited. The reality is that animal rescue of any sort is full of physically and mentally draining work, very tough decisions, meticulous management of resources, and a variety of techniques and theories as to how things should work. My personal experience in the past is with "companion" animals (cats, dogs, rats,) and wildlife, (mostly birds, sometimes others like groundhogs.) Due to health issues, I am not very active anymore.
There was one very large rescue I was part of (I am not in that article for the record, also warning for some graphic images.) I was doing media for the organization I was with at the time, was working full time, and spending my weekends volunteering with the rescued cats that had survived, often trudging my way through a place whose smells I will never forget. We saw an incomprehensible level of suffering and neglect that affected all of us deeply- human and feline alike. What I can say is that the web of corruption and destruction was so far reaching- across multiple states, other rescues, and so on, and being one of the faces of it (not even a big or ever present one) made me a target for attacks by the people defending the unstable and highly histrionic owner and her abuses of other animals. I met so many individuals there that I will never forget who fought against, and sometimes even survived unimaginable horrors. Many were adopted out and the ones who could not be live(d) out their lives in a separate location. I mention this anecdote, not to make it about me, but because it affects how I read a text like this. If someone writing about rescue and sanctuary is feeding me rainbows and sunshine alone, I am going to call bullshit. Overall, I found the text to be in line with the kind of struggles that can be involved in rescue and sanctuary, along with the beauty that people often imagine- which also very much exists.
What I found unique about this ethnography was that Abrell didn't just investigate and perform interviews at sanctuaries. He actively volunteered and took part in the tough work involved in daily maintenance. He volunteered at well organized and managed sanctuaries as well as one that was overwhelmed by their inability to say "no" and the surrounding community taking advantage of that. This gave him more well rounded insight that observation of others, interviews, and statistics alone could not. Despite his personal involvement in these systems and sanctuaries, I still found him pretty objective in ways that would allow someone who wasn't fully on board with the importance of rescue to read this book and gain from it.
There are a lot of topics covered quite well. Abrell uses the term bestia sacer to discuss the ways that other animals as property are not allowed to have worth and function outside of what is taken from them to create products of consumption, be it for food or companionship- causing them to be in the realm of those who can be legally and culturally sacrified. In some sanctuary narratives, nonhuman animals are still absent, as the focus is often on the humans-as-saviors narrative. Abrell captures the reality of how other animals also make contributions to sanctuary life and design- when allowed to- instead of framing them as a catalogue of beings secondary to the humans involved in rescue. His observations at VINE were indicative of this in particular. But, he and the workers at the sanctuaries featured all seemed to agree that sanctuary is nowhere near being 100% liberation. It still involves confinement and control and various sanctuaries have different ways the manage the level of control they use. VINE allows some chickens to rewild themselves in forests while some other sanctuaries disagree with this due to possible exposure to dangers. Some sanctuaries allow themselves to come dangerously close to a vegan petting zoo, while others have very strict boundaries kept between humans and the animals living there. One thing is for sure though, nothing was 100% anywhere. That is to say, you can only control so much of the lives of others and the surrounding environment.
Abrell includes a long, somewhat dry section on budgeting and fund raising. (Maybe if you're into economics, it would not be dry for you.) Either way, it's a critically important topic. Some people expect anyone working for a cause to work for free, to give everything they have, to never say no, and to never make mistakes. Through his research, Abrell shows how these are all recipes for disaster. Management of funds, proper treatment of staff, well organized volunteers, and a hell of a lot of use of the word, "no," is how the longest running sanctuaries stay afloat.
One of the more interesting and simultaneously more uncomfortable and painful sections to read was that of necro-care which Abrell describes as, "a form of selective biopolitical intervention that relies on categories of difference similar to those from which they hoped to liberate animals." For example, like humans, other animals differ greatly between species and as individuals within species. Some want to cuddle with you, others want nothing to do with you, some may attack their fellow sanctuary residents, others may provide critical assistance to a disabled resident of a completely different species.
Another dilemma is when sanctuaries must balance the rescue of obligate carnivores and predators that cannot subsist on vegan diets. Or, on a more common level, how we who share our homes with cats manage to feed them while being against killing the animals in their feed. In some ways, since my cat is on a prescription food that has slaughterhouse leftovers in it, I can quell my cognitive dissonance by telling myself animals aren't killed primarily for her food (a stretch,) or I can accept that she is in my care in an imperfect world and I am responsible for that and hopefully in the utopian vegan world of never never land, both problems will work themselves out. For sanctuaries that choose to raise and kill mice for birds of prey or reptiles to eat, it can be much more difficult to accept and manage. However, the people Abrell interviewed seemed to have been well chosen for the tasks of ethical ambiguity and killing of one animal to support another. This whole area leaves me with a queasy feeling. I am an idealist who also loves to put things, that cannot be boxed in, into tiny containers that I can easily grasp and analyze. That's not the reality of rescue or of life in general, and different sanctuaries deal with this in different ways. I came away from this section thinking a lot, not having any answers, and trying to be ok with not having any answers.
To wrap the book up, Abrell summarizes his findings in as well organized a fashion as the rest of the book. He acknowledges all of the challenges and gray areas, yet still conveys a message of the critical importance of sanctuaries both for the individual animals therein and for the wider struggle against capitalist oppression. I am looking forward to listening to his and others' thoughts at tomorrow's book club. If you are interested in signing up last minute, join us here. Even if you didn't read the book, you can always come and listen or ask questions.
This was also posted to my goodreads.
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