Wander With Wild Things

Today is technically Friday Fun Fact day. But I am not going to give you a Friday Fun Fact. Because I am mean. You will have to sustain yourself on the penguin facts from the previous post.

Why such cold heartlessness? I stumbled across a thought that resonated in so many different ways with me.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.
-Albert Einstein (1875-1955), Theoretical Physicist, Philosopher, Nobel Prize Winner

How perfectly this sums up so much of the debate going on, not only today, but throughout the history of our society. And not only in conservation, but any arena you can think of. People fear change, they fear what they don't understand, they fear fear itself. In some sort of ingrained response, generally this fear leads to the shutting down of any ability for thought and the parroting of anything that reinforces that simple fear of change. In general, the population accepts the status quo as "the way things are and should be." When you decide the status quo sucks and stand up bring about change to improve things, sadly, the first thing that hits you in the face is this violent opposition. Reason, logic, and truth seem to have no bearing in these gales of noise and panic.

Oh, Mr. Einstein, could you not have given us the solution to this problem?

I know, I know, my head is hanging in shame that I missed your Friday Fun Fact this week, but I offer a new look at an old friend as compensation.

We all think we know him, but I have recently discovered that there is much more than I ever thought to the man who stood biology and society on its head. Yep, this week was the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin's legendary epistle on evolution of species via natural selection. Now being a biologist, one would think that I have pored over the pages of this particular tome, but in truth, I had managed to reach this point in my life without ever cracking the cover.

Feeling a bit out of the loop, I figured I should read SOMETHING he wrote, seeing as he gets the credit (or blame if you happen to be some crazy right wing nut in sheer denial of reality, but then, I'd guess if you were, my blog is not exactly on your Favourites Toolbar anyway) for the founding theory of my field (even though credit should be fully shared with his gifted contemporary, Alfred Russell Wallace). I didn't really want to drag my toes through Origin itself, I confess that as much I love to read, it just seemed too much like a text book and too much like, well, work! So I picked up a copy of The Voyage of the Beagle instead and began following a young Darwin on mule treks through South America, hikes across Australian bushland, banquets in Tahiti and all the other things that I had no idea he ever did!

Turns out Charles Darwin was a lot more than a naturalist. He had an objective curiosity about the world and EVERYTHING in it. Every where, why, how, and when, he pondered possible answers. He had a keen eye for details and patterns that led him, unbeknownst to him, to ideas decades ahead of his time. Every place he went, he also turned his hand to rudimentary anthropology and tells story after story of both the native peoples and the (mostly Spanish) colonizers, both good and bad that cross his path. I also discovered he had a very dry wit about him and even in the most dismal circumstances, could bring an unexpectedly humourous turn of phrase to a story, such as a recounting of his guides hurling a cooking pot from the summit of a mountain in the belief that it was cursed after having failed to cook their potatoes (even though Darwin himself tried to explain to them that water boils at a reduced temperature at high elevations). In Tierra del Fuego, he tells of scaling a mountain.

During the first two hours I gave over all hopes of reaching the summit. So thick was the wood,...every landmark, though in a mountainous country, was completely shut out...So gloomy, cold, and wet was every part, that not even the fungi, mosses, or ferns could flourish...one's course was often arrested by sinking knee deep into the rotten wood;...we did not stay long on the top of the mountain. Our descent was not quite so laborious as our ascent, for the weight of the body forced a passage, and all the slips and falls were in the right direction.


The Beagle's route around the world

In short, though it's taken me forever to read it, it's a wonderful book and I LOVE it. I feel as though I am sitting at the knee of the legend himself while he recounts his stories. Each story of each day wanders in the tracks of his thought and you never know where the road will leave you. It is no great leap for his curious mind to go from observing a crawling insect to philosophizing on fate of mankind or the world. At times, I even felt a bit like a cheering teacher, watching his theories develop and with my own knowledge of modern biology, seeing where he is completely off course and then a few moments later, postulating ground-breaking truth. To appreciate how far out on a scientific limb Darwin's theories really were, one must understand that the current accepted theory in the scientific community of his time was that God had created each species individually and these species would continue, unchanging forever and were unrelated to each other.

It's fascinating, entertaining, amusing, and educational, all in one. There is sadness at the treatment of indiginous peoples, at the rapacious waste of resources newly found, but at the same time, wonder that fairly oozes from every line as he discovers people and places and creatures unknown to his world. I would like to have met him, to have basked in that passion, in that eagerness to explore and to question and to experience every moment and detail life has to offer. But since I can't, I shall have to suffice with this journal of his voyage which really did change the world.

I will leave you with one of his more beautiful passages revealing his deep love and wonder for the animals he spent his life pursuing and watching, written as he gazed upon waves pounding the shore of the coral atoll islands in the Malay archipelago.

It is impossible to behold these waves without feeling a conviction that an island, though built of the hardest rock...would ultimately yield and be demolished by such an irresistable power. Yet these low, insignificant coral-islets stand and are victorious: for here another power, as an antagonist, takes part in the contest...Let the hurricane tear up its thousand huge fragments; yet what will that tell against the accumulated labor of myriads of architects at work night and day, month after month? Thus do we see the soft and gelatious body of a polypus, [I interject: here he refers to the corals themselves, living animals who build the hard structure of the reefs and islands] through the agency of the vital laws, conquering the great mechanical power of the waves of an ocean which neither the art of man nor the inanimate works of nature could successfully resist.

That's right, I can summon famous people to appear with this blog! I bet you had no idea WWWT was so omniscient, eh?

Guess who appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart this week right after my post about her?

Jane Goodall on The Daily Show

That's right -- Dr. Jane Goodall. And sorry, Jon, I love ya, but you were sorely outclassed by this woman!

Now, let's see if I can focus my blogging powers and make Daniel Craig appear in my living room...ohhhhhmmmmm......

Jane Goodall is a name that many know. Ever since I read one of her books years ago, she's been one of my personal heroes. The book was Reason For Hope and much of it brought tears to my eyes. Dr. Goodall is a soft-spoken, compassionate, patient and open person with a core of incredible strength and perserverence that I can only hope to approach. This woman started out as a grad student watching the chimpanzees at Gombe and now she changes the world one person at a time. She has done so much for conservation and continues to be a peerless ambassador for those who have no human voice. I don't think I can name many other women (or even people!) who I find so truly beautiful and awe-inspiring.

In hopes that no one will mind (and I would fall over dead of awe if Dr. Goodall ever stumbled upon my blog anyway), I want to share an essay of hers that is also posted on her site. Working in conservation, it is so easy for me to become disheartened, but reading these words, I almost feel as if she is patting me on the head, saying, "It will be ok. Never forget that there are many reasons to have hope." It makes me want to sit down and weep in both relief and a desperate desire to trust that her world travel means that she has seen much more than I and has seen that there is indeed much hope out there.

Without further ado:
Jane's Reasons for Hope

"It is easy to be overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness as we look around the world. We are losing species at a terrible rate, the balance of nature is disturbed, and we are destroying our beautiful planet. We have fear about water supplies, where future energy will come from – and most recently the developed world has been mired in an economic crisis. But in spite of all this I do have hope. And my hope is based on four factors.

The Human Brain
Firstly, we have at last begun to understand and face up to the problems that threaten us and the survival of life on Earth as we know it. Surely we can use our problem-solving abilities, our brains, to find ways to live in harmony with nature. Many companies have begun "greening" their operations, and millions of people worldwide are beginning to realize that each of us has a responsibility to the environment and our descendants. Everywhere I go, I see people making wiser choices, and more responsible ones.

The Indomitable Human Spirit
My second reason for hope lies in the indomitable nature of the human spirit. There are so many people who have dreamed seemingly unattainable dreams and, because they never gave up, achieved their goals against all the odds, or blazed a path along which others could follow. The recent presidential election in the US is one example. As I travel around the world I meet so many incredible and amazing human beings. They inspire me. They inspire those around them.

The Resilience of Nature
My third reason for hope is the incredible resilience of nature. I have visited Nagasaki, site of the second atomic bomb that ended World War II. Scientists had predicted that nothing could grow there for at least 30 years. But, amazingly, greenery grew very quickly. One sapling actually managed to survive the bombing, and today it is a large tree, with great cracks and fissures, all black inside; but that tree still produces leaves. I carry one of those leaves with me as a powerful symbol of hope. I have seen such renewals time and again, including animal species brought back from the brink of extinction.

The Determination of Young People
My final reason for hope lies in the tremendous energy, enthusiasm and commitment of young people around the world. As they find out about the environmental and social problems that are now part of their heritage, they want to right the wrongs. Of course they do -- they have a vested interest in this, for it will be their world tomorrow. They will be moving into leadership positions, into the workforce, becoming parents themselves. Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world. We should never underestimate the power of determined young people.

I meet many young people with shining eyes who want to tell Dr. Jane what they've been doing, how they are making a difference in their communities. Whether it's something simple like recycling or collecting trash, something that requires a lot of effort, like restoring a wetland or a prairie, or whether it's raising money for the local dog shelter, they are a continual source of inspiration. My greatest reason for hope is the spirit and determination of young people, once they know what the problems are and have the tools to take action.

So let’s move forward in this new millennium with hope, for without it all we can do is eat and drink the last of our resources as we watch our planet slowly die. Let’s have faith in ourselves, in our intellect, in our staunch spirit and in our young people. And let’s do the work that needs to be done, with love and compassion."

--Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE

I hope to have a new post for you by mid-week if not before, but until then, I leave you with some true wisdom from Albert Schweitzer, theologian, musician, physicist, philosopher (how's that for a resume!):

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things,
man will not himself find peace.

Looking at the picture in yesterday's post, I am reminded that the the conflict between agriculture and habitat is nothing new. Neither is the demand for people with the passion and conviction to stand in the face of the status quo.

"Ding" Darling (1876-1962) is a name most of us in wildlife biology are familiar with but one that I think the rest of society has missed out on. He was a gifted editorial artist (his cartoons grace this post), which garnered him two Pulitzers. But even more important was his skill and dedication for conservation education. He founded the National Wildlife Federation as well as the US Duck Stamp program, just to name two of his lasting legacies.

Leadership and education like his are priceless in our rapidly changing world. People are bombarded with information and MISinformation from every direction at once on a daily basis. The long term consequences are lost among the trees of the short term gain. More than ever we need voices of reason and compassion, like Darling's to cut through the noise of the everyday.

It is at once hopeful and heartbreaking that even then, over 50 years ago, Darling and others like him saw that without our natural resources, we are nothing. Without clean water and air, without the richness of our global fauna, our future is lost. Darling also understood, in a way so beautifully illustrated in the cartoon above, that conservation and economic development are NOT mutually exclusive. It's not all or nothing, either or, as the naysayers would have you believe. All it takes is some thoughtfulness, common sense, planning and a dash of love to hold on to our invaluable "natural capital" on which our lives are built.

If we can just do that, we can avoid ending up with this:

You'll hear me talk a lot about water -- things that influence it, creatures that live in it, how we depend on it, how we hurt it. And you may wonder why; "Is she just really thirsty? Did her mother give birth in a lake? Is she part fish?" Well, ok, I am a bit thirsty right now, but in truth, water is not only a part of us, it is a formative force in our lives and without it, we literally could not exist. For the next few days, I will be away at a conference, but I will leave you with these words from my favourite naturalist, William Beebe, to ponder. He transcribed his thoughts in 1934 after reaching record oceanic depths in his explorations of life at ALL elevations.

"One thing we cannot escape--forever afterward, throughout all our life, the memory of the magic of water and its life, of the home which was once our own--this will never leave us."

Years ago, my grandmother gave me a book of the writings of May Sarton (From May Sarton's Well), a writer and poet whose like I have not encountered since. I must have been in high school then and I remember reading through her words, graced with the photography of Edith Royce Schade, and feeling like someone had interpreted part of my soul. Sarton had a deep love for the natural world, as well as an uncanny insight into the workings of human thought and emotion. Her words were at once inspiring, challenging, and haunting and several passages have stuck with me over the years. One in particular I wanted to share with you evoked a sharp longing for what I desired for my own life:

I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seeds every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree's way of being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the wind.

May we all have the grace and generosity to live as the trees do and add to the future by conserving the beauty that surrounds us in the present.

Yes, I have found her at last, quite possibly the coolest woman alive. Ok, I say this a little tongue in cheek (why is that word so hard to spell, I always want to type "cheeck", it just seems like there SHOULD be a "c" there, but I digress..) but mostly seriously. Her name is Anne LaBastille and I am reading "Woodswoman", the first of her books about her life after her early divorce.


This chick decided to heck with it all, she was going to follow what she loved and build a log cabin in the woods on a lake. So she up and buys 22 acres in the Adirondacks (this was in the mid-60's I believe) and proceeds to construct her little kingdom. She literally goes to the sawmill, buys 20-something huge aspen logs, grabs a couple guys to bring a generator and some tools to the property so they can frame the building, floats the logs up the lake, and proceeds to build her cabin. With an axe. She then lives there with her boat, and eventually a German Shepherd named Pitzi. She is bloody awesome.

No, she does not become angry spinster woman, for all of you who might want to shove her into that peg the world makes for women who get fed up with some dumbass guy's crap and decide that surrounding oneself with beauty and animals is a better option. She entertains regular visitors, does biological field work in South America, completes a degree in wildlife ecology (no easy feat, I can tell you that!), works as a consultant and writer, and becomes certified as an Adirondack guide.

It's like a drink of fresh, cold water, to hear the voice of a strong, intelligent woman who took the lemons of divorce and made an incredible, life-filling lemonade that she enjoys with every fiber of her being. She has that ability which I constantly seek, to be fully connected to the forest and its life all around her, yet fully engaged in the outside world. Her cabin remains both her sanctuary of retreat and her platform from which to launch herself to wherever her eyes are set.

Yeah, I freaking love her.

Press release of January 14th: in the few remaining hours of a presidency that seems like it will never end, the US Fish & Wildlife Service has again delisted the grey wolf (pictured right).

Details here: Natural Resources Defense Council News

IDIOT!!! (that is directed right at you, Secretary Kempthorne -- I'd use a stronger word, but you may not understand it, given that the rudiments of ecology escape you completely)

Even if you are completely backwards and hate wolves and blame them for everything from lack of profits in ranching to your burnt toast, this action is 100% illegal. Federal courts already ruled that the FIRST delisting, which resulted in over 100 dead wolves, was illegal. WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IT A SECOND TIME???? It's nothing but a parting "screw you" to the citizens of this country (or at least any of them with half a brain or a quarter of a conscience).

Because grey wolves are listed under the Endangered Species act, in order to be legally delisted, the species must meet the goals listed in the Recovery Plan, a document put together at the time of listing which details how many populations and sometimes individuals there must be before the species' status can change. Here's a big surprise: those goals have not been met.

So why should you be pissed off that this is going on? For one, we need predators to keep our ecosystems healthy and that includes public lands that you have paid for. Ever since grey wolves have been reintroduced to Yellowstone, elk herds have been healthier and more controlled in numbers, which means there is less overgrazing by rampant elk, which means that native plant communities are rebounding, which means the bugs are happy, which means the birds are happy.....you get the picture!! All of this is not possible without the top predator, the grey wolf. (And what the bloody hell is with the logic "hey, we reintroduced the animals and were so proud of it, but eh, we're tired of them now, let's go back and shoot 'em all." Dear god, people make my head hurt.)

We have precious few top predators left in the US and it is easy to see what fills the vacuum. White tailed deer taking over every nook and cranny they can fit into, so overpopulated that thousands starve to death every winter. Smaller predators like raccoons and possums multiplying like rabbits with nothing to keep them in check. Native plant communities and landscaping alike devoured to the nubs by deer and rabbits who also enjoy breeding like, well, rabbits! The cascade of effects is long and it is all a result of our own paranoia and fear when it comes to predators.

Wolves do not hunt down and attack people and children. They will go out of their way to stay as FAR from you as possible and have ZERO interest in interacting with civilization unless they are starving and desperate. There are somewhere around 20 recorded wolf attacks in modern history. Most of those were instigated by humans seeking out and harassing these secretive animals.

Wolves do not massacre huge amounts of livestock (or anything for that matter). The average wolfpack is successful at killing an elk 1 out of 15 times it tries. Confirmed wolf-livestock kills are so small in number that wolves don't even warrant their own category in reports -- most canine kills or harassment are a result of stray dogs. Often wolves do not even kill their own prey but will scavenge gut piles left by hunters or the kills of other predators, much like a coyote will.

Ok, I could probably go on about this for a very long time, but I will be no less outraged by the end of it. Some backwards western lobby has some senators and probably our beloved *insert dripping sarcasm here* Mr. Kempthorne in their pocket and is not only trying to push through illegal government activity, but is trying to destroy a part of our natural heritage as well.

Maybe you'll never see a wolf, maybe you'll never hear how magical a howl sounds after sunset. Maybe you'll never feel that thrill of knowing a truly wild thing is alive and fulfilling its crucial role in keeping the system in balance, is trotting across a snowy field in the dark living in a world of sounds and smells that we will never know. Maybe you feel like all of this is far away from you and you're not sure what value it all has.

But I can tell you this and you can know it to be true: everything in the world is part of a huge web, a system that is so complex, I don't believe we can ever completely understand it. You start pulling strands and species out of that web and soon enough, it's going to fall in around your head and what you find after the dust settles is not going to be any kind of place you want to live.

What is at the heart of what is happening in this situation? The government is trying to help a handful of small-minded, uninformed, misled, and backwards-thinking people exterminate a species. And if they have some success with one species, you can bet you will be kissing goodbye to a lot more after that. Which one will be the one that brings it all down? What kind of dark and damaged place will be left for your children to grow up in and for their children to live in?

I will close with the wisdom of a man who was one of the world's greatest naturalists and explorers, William Beebe, who said in 1906, over 100 years ago, as he saw already how human greed and selfishness mowed down the very world they depended on:

"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."

I'm always looking for my next favourite book, so I have to introduce you to Wade Davis. He is an ethnobotanist (translation: anthropology mated with botany and the result is this esoteric but fascinating field of study) with a gift for writing. My first meeting with him was on the pages of "The Serpent and the Rainbow" where he travels to Haiti to investigate the legend of the zombie (oh yes, they DO exist and you'll just have to read the book to find out how). My mother gave me the book and I started it, thinking I'd be bored silly (despite my love of biology, botany leaves me noticeably glassy-eyed) -- instead, I was sucked in and couldn't put it down. Part adventure tale, part forensic investigation, and part just-plain-meeting-really-interesting-authentic-people, his travels with voodoo left me hungry for more.

So I hit up another (also a gift from mom, she has a knack for finding these things for me) that I just finished, this time the considerably more sizeable both in topic and doorstop quality "One River." Davis tells not only of his own mid-70's graduate project in the Amazon studying coca and its origins, but also his professor's exploits in the 40's and 50's with hallucinogenic plants and wild rubber. It did take me a loooooooooooooooooooong time to read it (and I'm a pretty fast reader), but it was simply fascinating and like most naturalist/adventure books, made me long for a good adventure, which I haven't had in years!

Interesting side note: Davis' professor, Richard Evans Schultes, supposedly had a lab where he taught at Harvard where he assigned his students to sample a hallucinogenic plant of choice and report on the results. All I have to say is: where was THAT class when I was an undergrad????!

Even if you don't think you're into reading biology books or books about plants, I still highly recommend. Davis makes the story flow so despite the fact that he is educating you, it doesn't hurt one bit. And it keeps me in perspective, reminding me that there is a whole world out there full of places that each have their own unique beauty and challenges, each with their own peoples and flora and fauna and rivers and seasons. I'm only a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny piece in all of that and somehow, that keeps me grounded....

So wander on -- right to your local library and check it out!