“I feel almost like we are a threatened species.”

Mike McCoy’s original plan was to combine his interests in wild animals, ecology and veterinary medicine to maintain wild stock in African plains for the World Health Organization. But when the San Diego Zoo offered him a two-year internship fresh out of veterinary school in Colorado, he jumped. He soon soured on zoo work, however, and decided to try to make a living working on domestic pets. He settled in Imperial Beach for its surroundings--San Diego Bay, the Pacific Ocean and a natural estuary and wetland. Now, the 45-year-old environmental activist works for clean, quiet air, endangered species and peace. He worked on and off for 16 years to protect the Tijuana River Valley and won a victory when the western end of the wetland was chosen the 10th National Estuarine Sanctuary. It is now a research reserve. He rails against the ecological irresponsibility he sees among not only land developers, but everyday consumers, and has running battles with politicians. But the good-natured outdoorsman raised in the Rocky Mountains. He says he just wants people “to respect life--and the complex system that supports it.” Times staff writer Nancy Reed interviewed him and Times photographer John Fung photographed him in his office.

I just hate to see somebody destroy a natural area, anywhere, but if it’s in my backyard, I am going to fight harder than ordinary. I did the same thing in Colorado in a wilderness area there. It is just part of my life.

I feel almost like we are a threatened species, like we’re going down with the ship and people don’t even recognize it. I’m scared, to be honest with you. Some of the things we do--I think we threaten our own generation, let alone our next.

I just think that life is beautiful, that living things are incredible. I don’t care if it’s an ant crawling down the sidewalk or an elephant running across the jungles of Africa, a slime mold growing on a string, a redwood in the Avenue of the Giants or a human being. To threaten that incredible evolution is more than I can conceive. I don’t understand how any

thinking individual would possibly not want to preserve life.

You have a close analogy to draw: what we do to the Earth and what cancer does to the body.

Cancer is going to eventually catch up to the host and kill it. What we do to the Earth is also going to catch up.

I like veterinarian medicine, but if I had an ultimate goal, the message would be that people should take actions that will preserve and protect this planet. The way you treat the Earth, the way you treat other creatures, and other people, is ultimately the way you treat yourself. For every action there are equal mountains of reaction.

I was brought up to respect life. My dad and my mother put that into the core of my being. They always had animals, and you respected everything. My family home is at the edge of the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area in Colorado. And here there is a national sanctuary, so I like to live near very complex natural systems rather than just communities.

But the way the community interfaces with that environment is extremely important.

I have had people despise me. They want to kill me because of my interference with their profit. I have had it happen that they change their minds. I think people are subject to change their minds when the truth is exposed. When people begin to think in terms of more than themselves--more than just their community, more than just humanity--and begin to think about all species, soil, air, water, the Earth itself and beyond, the level of awareness and comprehension changes. They begin to move from self-orientation to life-support orientation.

My wife gets pretty tight with me, I spend half my life in veterinary medicine and the other half in ecological issues and problems. It is my third marriage; the others probably collapsed because of this rigorous commitment.

It’s worth it, I will guarantee it’s worth it. I think so. I hope so. We will find out in the next chapter, I guess. If it isn’t a black hole.