408 EURAMERICA in spirit but trapped in an increasingly incapacitated body. Every human and nonhuman he writes about is treated as extended family, binding them together in a circle of his personal affection. He does not pontificate on how Gaia, the Earth, is one ecosystem or how similar humans are to animals—he writes as if these truths were selfevident. A collector with maternal instincts to provide care, he expresses effervescent ecstasy over the beauty of the world, yet his narrative cannot hide his sorrow—tinged with postcolonial angst— over its depletion. Although Buck and Durrell would have agreed that they were extraordinarily lucky men to have spent their lives among animals, their projects have had problematic consequences. Buck’s activities, viewed from the current age of extinction, are utterly unacceptable because he made use of the animal trappers that are today’s illegal poachers. His methods of capture were sometimes brutal and some of his caretaking techniques—questionable even at the time—have been consigned to history by responsible zoos all over the world. Animal capture has become a villainous narrative with wildlife trafficking being the fourth most profitable illicit trade after that of humans, weapons and drugs. Buck’s persona, representative of preWorld War II America, has been replaced by the new heroism of preventing capture and rescuing animals, such as shown in the film The Cove (2009), the videos of Greenpeace members protecting whales (1975), the Born Free documentaries (2007) about resettling former entertainment animals in sanctuaries, and in the media coverage of the all-female anti-poacher unit, the Kenyan Black Mambas (2021). That said, as mentioned at the beginning of this essay, the hunting stories upon which Buck built his narrative also endure, as does the emphasis on animal violence in many wildlife television programs. However, that narrative is now compounded with stories about hunting down the hunters, such as in Bryan Christy’s (2021) novel, In the Company of Killers. Durrell remains a posthumous spokesman for species survival and habitat preservation; his caretaking and captive-breeding
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