The BBC website recently ran this article on an Alaskan woman who is a hunter and also a nature lover. It’s often assumed that if you are capable of killing an animal, even for food, that you obviously don’t love nature. And yes, there are hunters (and other people) who only see nature as being good for what it can give us, not good in its own right.
But there are those who hunt and fish who do appreciate the animals they catch for food, and who have respect for them. Indigenous people worldwide have had this complex relationship with nature for thousands of years; it is only in the increasingly industrialized world where we have become more separate from nature, and therefore we forget that there is more than one way to love it.
So it is with Vultures, who love nature and also collect the remains of deceased animals as part of an expression of that love. Cultures worldwide have cared for the remains of their human relatives who have passed on; many Vultures feel the same about the hides and bones in their homes.