Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America

by Jon Mooallem

Now, as soon as Humphrey and the Bootlegger got going, motoring past the Antioch Dunes and heading home, the crowd rushed into their cars and peeled off for the next viewing opportunity in a neighboring town. “The place cleared out like the plague had hit,” one refuge employee reported. The dunes had been trampled. Endangered plants were destroyed, new trails had been stamped into the sand, and existing ones were smeared open and destabilized to the point where, a week later, after heavy rains, an entire section of hillside collapsed into the river. With it went many buckwheat plants and whatever Lange’s metalmark eggs had been laid on them that summer. An internal Fish and Wildlife Service memo noted, “It is ironic that one endangered species”—the humpback—“could have such an impact on three other endangered species.” It was a tragedy of charisma. Because of their affection for a single celebrity whale, hordes of people had jeopardized an entire species of anonymous butterfly. They weren’t an angry mob; they were a loving mob. But they loved only certain things.