Animals at Burning Man

Burning Man in some ways can be described as animalistic and primal, but it is virtually absent of nonhuman animal life. Upon my exit of the playa, I welcomed the first dog I ran into like an old friend I hadn’t realized I’d missed so much. Burning Man also does not permit companion animals, for good reason.

Anything goes as far as Burning Man attire, including nothing but the skin on your back. Burners often wear little during the day in light of 90-degree temperatures and a free, liberal atmosphere. But the nights are cold, and wise burners bundle up, many in the faux fur coats that are extremely popular on the playa. The fuzzy, bulky coats are often colorful, fun and handmade, and some even glow in the dark. They contribute to the lighthearted nature of Burning Man.

Then there is the dark side of Burning Man: Despite the playa’s lack of wild animals, every night thousands of rabbit, fox and coyote corpses appeared. After attending the festival in 2008, I was surprised and dismayed at the number of people wearing dead animals this year, in the form of fur coats, shawls, trim and other pieces. It's pretty easy to recognize real fur when you live with a rabbit. Some furs looked new, some were vintage, and some were parts such as tails. All (even roadkill) promote the idea that animal suffering is OK for human vanity and a twisted sense of fashion.

To make one fur coat, you must kill an average of 40 animals, depending on the animal used. With nearly 54,000 people attending this month, there were easily 10,000 dead animals at Burning Man this year in fur alone. Support of the fur trade and the myth of fur as fashion supports:

• Fur farms, where animals are confined to tiny, filthy cages and killed by anal or genital electrocution or neck breaking
• Trapping, in which an animal will try to chew her own leg off to escape
• The brutal theft of the lives of sentient beings whose sole wish and right is to live

While real fur comes with a stigma of cruelty, faux fur, or “playa fur,” is fun and comes free of the animal suffering pricetag. When one guy posted a question about whether or not to bring a real fur coat to Burning Man, one commenter remarked that no one would know the difference. Another replied: “Well, except for the fact that my faux fur coat is white with fuchsia tips, and my faux fur chaps are fluorescent green... Yah, nobody can tell the difference…lol.” It’s also cheap, easy to use to create costumes and bike décor, and easy to clean. 

I hope that the playa dust destroyed the real fur worn at this year’s Burning Man and that future years will feature far fewer corpses littering the desert and putting a very unnecessary, ugly mark on all the love and good cheer at Burning Man.

Websites

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBR0Mz9iWrw

http://www.furkills.org/talking_points.shtml

Update, 2019: Faux fur is hard on the environment. It sheds fibers that will be around long after we're gone! It remains far more ethical than real fur, but ideally, we'll begin skipping fake fur too. <3