Burnaby....
i went for a walk in burnaby central park yesterday... lovely big old trees and periodic stations for doing squats and other strengthening moves... the bars housed inside frames and just sitting out in the weather transformed by elements
once they were shiny and new

the squirrels there approached me, rather than running away, expecting food, i guess
discarded empty husks of peanuts could still be seen, not yet buried or reclaimed by the mushrooms
evidence of recent feedings
I pass a sign whose words, if they were heeded, command park visitors not to feed the wildlife or the birds
by wildlife, they meant the squirrels, and i suppose there were probably unseen moles and mice and such, but it's not like bears lived in those woods -- maybe a few raccoons and skunks. 
but the squirrels were the only ones cute or brave enough to risk head-on contact with humans
they don't realize that if we ever run out of peanuts, for whatever reason, we'll probably eat THEM. 
the raccoons haven't forgotten, brazen as they are

but everyone feeds the squirrels in spite of the lonely imperial sign
a sign which invokes the whole question of humans' role in nature and whether we affect other life 
it's a silly question, really, because of course humans affect ecosystems.
But the sign really points to a moral debate, and it's a cloudy one at best.
it's ok to domesticate cats, dogs, and other farm animals; it's ok to keep birds, fish, and snakes as pets
in fact, in those situations, one is expected to feed the wildlife
but squirrels living in a public park are off limits -- we wouldn't want them to become dependent on us, after all; how would we resolve the question of responsibility? To which individuals would we assign it? and ultimately, who would pay?
it often comes down to that, doesn't it? 

In the end, the sign is yet another layer in the great unfolding drama of "Humans' Domestic Space versus the Wilderness". On that scale, a city park is a little bit gray, I suppose, but it must lean in the direction of "wilderness", depending on the park, of course. Take central park in New York City, for example. Arguably, this park falls more into the "domestic space" category, even with its zoo of bizarre animals that don't belong in that habitat anyway, and which would, in most instances, be considered "wild". 

Within that zoo, it isn't morally acceptable to get into the giraffe's pen. One can stand outside the pen and enjoy the warmth of human social acceptance, but get inside and suddenly you're "crazy". The subtext here is that the giraffe's pen is a little tiny pocket of "wilderness" within a swathe of domestic space; notwithstanding the giraffe's dependence on its "keepers" in this situation, it remains a wild animal in wild space. 

But all of this is merely the infinitely subtle gradations of the real point, which is this: humans still consider themselves separate from the rest of nature. From this spring comes an unending flow of misunderstanding and debate -- since it isn't true, we have to justify the belief: we have to build cities, for instance; we have to erect giant fences marking the boundaries of wildness. We have to write and study essays and theories regarding the superiority of the human species, we have to make movies which pose the alternate view that humans are in fact a disease, or the most inferior lifeform inhabiting the planet. We have to develop a scale or hierarchy of life and determine where to place every species on this scale, according to criteria that we invent, meanwhile acknowledging that we haven't discovered all of the species currently alive, or even some that once lived but now breathe no more.

it's an absurd project with no end and no purpose, except that it allows us to justify the actions we take which limit the capacity of the earth to produce abundant, self-sustaining, and diverse webs of life [clear-cutting forests, lakes of toxic tailings from the alberta tar sands, etc]. We take these actions to enrich our own lives, again according to criteria that are rarely examined and in any case invented by us without consultation in the "wilderness".
Let's examine this project, these criteria, these beliefs. 
Let's have the courage to do that.