EDITOR’S NOTE: Sorry about the tiny type this time. So much to say...so little space...
"RE-WILDING" & "RATS IN A BOX"
When June/July’s issue of The Zephyr containing "The Greening of Wilderne$$" finally saw the light of day, I wondered what some of my old enviro pals might think of it. While the Utah environmental community remains conspicuously and unanimously silent, I did hear from a couple of buddies from my Earth First! days.
It began with an email from Moab’s Lance Christie, (NOT an Earth Firster!) who I’d quoted several times in the "Greening" piece and who asked for an opportunity to express his own take on the current crisis of confidence among many environmentalists. Of course, I was more than happy to provide the space. Then, via Lance, I heard from Dave Foreman, one of the founders of Earth First! in the early 80s and a man I’ve admired for 25 years. Dave had seen the Zephyr article and offered an essay, "Nature’s Crisis: 2005," for inclusion in this issue as well.
Then, from out of my ghosty past, a name I hadn’t seen in years appeared in my inbox...another EF!er from decades gone by. Mike Roselle, the man I once knew as Nagasaki Johnson, had somehow found the Greening story on the web site and offered his comments. Mike’s words were originally intended simply as a letter, but I asked him to expand it a bit and his observations are included here as well ("The Road Goes on Forever").
So...you get to hear from three battle-scarred vets of the environmental wars that we’ve all been a part of for most of our respective adult lives. At the outset let me say that I admire all three of these gentlemen, respect their passion for the Land, and honor their visions for the future. But I believe and trust that they’re strong enough to withstand and even seek constructive criticism when it’s offered; I must admit, from my cynical perspective, Lance and Dave seek a vision of the future that is not wrapped in Reality.
At the heart of their approach to wilderness is the belief that saving what remains of wild land in North America is not enough—that we must have the vision to "re-wild" the continent, a term first coined by Dave in his thoughtful book and restore the land to what it once was. Both acknowledge that it will be a slow process, taking as much as a century to implement. Lance, in his essay, seems to believe that by proclaiming this "science-based" approach to wilderness, environmentalists will be able to remove themselves from the crass commercial exploitation and commodification of the natural world that was at the core of my "Greening" essay, and that somehow, by framing the argument in these altruistic terms, we will do the right thing and restore the land to its fabled pristine glory of days long gone by. It’s a beautiful and inspiring dream of a North American continent that none of us has experienced.
What is missing from their argument is not only critical but all-encompassing. Lance never mentions the word in his essay and Dave’s reference to it is contained in one sentence.
Over-population. "Rats in a box." We all know that when you put too many rats in a box they start eating each other. In the 21st Century, we’re fast becoming those desperate rodents. How do we develop wildlife corridors in a box full of cannibals?
Dave notes in his essay only that, "human over-population is the underlying cause of all conservation and environmental problems."
Underlying. Indeed. It’s EVERYTHING.
( I willingly add here that both Christie and Foreman, in other essays and articles, have given more of their attention to the issue. But ultimately they seem to be saying, "Over-population is the ‘given’ here. How do we work around it?" )
Over-population is also an overwhelming contributor to this planet’s social, economic, emotional and spiritual crises as well. From crime and poverty to crowded parking lots. Much of the Earth, or at least its most notable consumers, have embraced the free market global economy as we move recklessly into the future and that very premise REQUIRES that we continue to make stuff and create services that the exploding population will want to buy, in order to provide employment for the exploding population that needs work. That reality requires the consumption of our natural resources and its space at a rate that most of us cannot even begin to grasp. It’s why my tirades about Rich Weasels and over-consumption are ignored—because the lower income families who depend on the financial resources of the Rich have no choice. They need the work. It’s the ultimate Catch-22.
From Rewilding North America, Foreman identifies the planet’s six global wounds: direct killing of species, loss and degradation of ecosystems, fragmentation of wildlife habitat, loss and disruption of natural processes, invasion by exotic species and disease and poisoning of land, air, water and wildlife.
Then he lists the causes of each of these wounds. Among the causes are: "agricultural clearing, grazing, mining, wetland draining, urbanization, sprawl, water diversions, road building, ORV use, pipelines, feedlots, factories, smelters, and toxic wastes." (This is partial and not even close to the complete list Dave offers.)
And of course, on one level he’s correct. But that’s like insisting that a loaded .357 Magnum is the cause of a gunshot wound. It’s the guy pulling the trigger who’s accountable and that’s us, in numbers too big to ignore.
To give a very specific example of the way their "science-based" approach to wilderness is ignoring Reality, consider a recent proposal by the Rewilding Institute that received considerable media attention. It’s an ambitious plan to re-wild the Great Plains and restore it with animals that disappeared 13,000 years ago from Pleistocene North America. The idea is to remove threatened species from Africa that are similar to those that were driven to extinction here and introduce them on the Great Plains. To quote from their web site:
Our vision begins immediately, spans the coming century, and is justified on ecological, evolutionary, economic and aesthetic and ethical grounds. The idea is to actively promote the restoration of large wild vertebrates into North America in preference to the ‘pests and weeds’ (rats and dandelions) that will otherwise come to dominate the landscape. This ‘Pleistocene re-wilding’ would be achieved through a series of carefully managed ecosystem manipulations using closely related species as proxies for extinct large vertebrates, and would change the underlying premise of conservation biology from managing extinction to actively restoring natural processes.
No one can question the sincerity or even the extraordinary vision of such a plan. But how is it they chose the Great Plains as its laboratory for this proposal? Here’s what the Institute says:
"...although human land-use patterns are dynamic and uncertain, in some areas, such as parts of the Great Plains in the United States, human populations are declining—which may offer future conservation opportunities.
That’s true. The Great Plains is the only part of America that currently shows a declining population. Some believe those struggling communities scattered across the vast prairies of Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas are beyond facing an "uncertain future." That they’re irrevocably doomed to be the next generation of abandoned ghost towns.
I can recall, 15 years ago, the town of Moab, Utah being described in just those terms. Moab, Utah, once the "Uranium Capital of the World," was about to dry up and blow away. A quarter of its homes sat empty and for sale at rock bottom prices. Moab was about to become a ghost town itself.
Pretty damn funny.
Let me provide my own "vision" of the Great Plains’ future. As the United States population continues to expand—from 150 million in 1950, to 300 million by 2007, to 400 million by 2050, to 750 million by 2100, the south and southwest parts of North America will fill to and beyond capacity. Rural communities in the Intermountain West will become small urban nightmares of their own and people who were "newcomers" to places like Moab in the early years of the 21st Century will wonder, "What has happened to our town?"
One day, twenty or thirty or forty years from now, maybe sooner, when barely a trace of Old America remains, some trans-continental traveler, racing from his summer home in Wisconsin to his winter home in Sedona, will grow weary of the intense traffic on Interstate 70 and opt for a side-road. He’ll discover these small mostly forgotten communities with their brick streets and old homes and the rare locally owned cafes and even rarer friendly faces and be stunned by his "discovery."
"This is incredible!" he’ll squeal. "Why this is...this is just like America used to be! It’s so...authentic! It’s so quaint!" He’ll rush to the local real estate office and discover that home prices are not just affordable...they’re a damn steal! And he’ll buy four homes in one day, just like out-of-town speculators did to Moab in 1988. Stories will appear in national magazines about "The Last Secret Places in North America."
"Remember what a Quiet Life once was? Re-discover ‘Old America.’ Come to Nebraska!"
Americans will flock to the Great Plains in numbers that will overwhelm its original citizens. But they won’t be able to sell-out for a good profit and go elsewhere for a quiet life. The Great Plains will be the end of the line. No more escapes after that.
Critics of my vision might argue that the Plains are too inhospitable, too cold, too barren, too bleak to ever appeal to a large human migration. But if you were a smothered rat in a box, wouldn’t Grainfield, Kansas sound awfully damn appealing to you?
Until I see the environmental movement actively, passionately embrace the issue of population and acknowledge that without a dramatic turnaround in the human numbers in the next century, we are doomed to lose what’s left of our "natural world," I can’t bring myself to take any of these visionary plans seriously. We can’t stop an avulsed wound with a Band-Aid. We cannot build a Utopian Wilderness in the middle of a sewer teeming with crazed rats, and that is about to become our last unworkable option.
RANGERS SHOULD ‘RANGE’
When Chief Ranger Jerry Epperson hired me to be a seasonal ranger at Arches National Park, so many years ago, I wasn’t even sure what my duties were supposed to be. So it seemed like a good idea to ask.
Epperson smiled wryly and said, "A ranger should range."
And while all of us endured the other Park Service chores like collecting fees and working the visitor center information desk and cleaning toilets and admonishing the tourists for their often almost unbearable ignorance, we still preferred to ‘range’—to get into the backcountry and explore–any time the opportunity allowed us to. To know a piece of land, for no other reason than the intimacy between you that it provided, was the greatest reward of all. We didn’t range for profit. We did it for our hearts and our souls. Not to mention our soles. My "rangering days" are still filled with fond memories of unforgettable beauty.
The fee collecting was always the least pleasant of my duties and I did them reluctantly and with little enthusiasm. Its only advantage was the opportunity it provided to occasionally meet beautiful single women camping alone who were in desperate need of a bath and who found my invitation for a hot shower and a cold beer almost irresistible. I was no chick magnet but my running hot water was.
But fast forward 20 years and employees of the various federal agencies collecting land use fees are showing a zealousness in their work that is almost incomprehensible. It’s not as if they’re working on a commission. Yet, I continue to read stories of park and forest rangers and BLM staffers who spend most of their day looking for fee violators...even to the point of searching once empty dirt roads, watching for visitors without the necessary proof of payment taped to their windshields or stapled to their foreheads.
The almost fanatical quest for fees turned to tragedy in New Mexico a few weeks ago at Elephant Butte State Park when a state park ranger shot a tourist to death during a dispute over a camping fee. According to a story in the Las Cruces Sun-News, the victim, apparently a tourist in his 50s from Montana, became belligerent with Ranger Clyde Woods, a three-year veteran of the parks department when he refused to pay a $14 camping fee. Woods attempted to arrest the camper for trespassing and the man put his hands in his pockets and refused to remove them.
According to a spokeswoman for the parks division, Erica Asmus-Otero, the man "acted in a manner that our officer is trained to respond to," and said he was "aggressive and verbally abusive." So Ranger Woods shot him dead. The dead man was NOT carrying a firearm or a knife of any kind.
After the shooting, Parks Director Dave Simon said, "Deadly force is always a last resort" and added that the "vast majority of park users comply willingly with park fees."
I have my own deadly force story.
While I always preferred to range than collect, sometimes the non-compliant camper can get under a ranger’s skin. One evening when the Arches campground was full, a couple of young men, perhaps in their late teens arrived after dark and tried to camp illegally in the picnic area. My first encounter with them was civil enough and I told them they needed to leave the park. Twenty minutes later, I caught them again, when paid campers complained that they’d moved into their site. This time I was firmer and their attitude was icier. They left, muttering as they went, and I knew we’d meet again. A few minutes later I could see their headlights creeping down the Salt Valley Road in search of an illegal campsite.
My self-righteous indignation has always been a quality I needed to work on, and on this evening it was in full bloom---after all, how dare these jerks defy the order of a ranger!---and I went after them. I found their vehicle tracks in Salt Valley Wash. They’d driven off-road and were somewhere ahead of me. It was 11 PM, I was out of radio contact, but determined to confront and cite these violators.
At the time, rangers had not yet become full-time cops but even then we were required to carry our sidearms during night patrols. So I walked into the darkness with my maglite and service revolver snapped firmly in its holster to confront and punish these noncompliant campers. I found them a hundred yards down the dry wash, already wrapped in their sleeping bags and drifting toward sleep. My arrival was totally unexpected and when I brutally advised them that they not only would be required to leave immediately but that I was also issuing them a federal citation for driving through a natural area, the two young men came unglued.
Both leaped from their bags, screaming. They called me every unkind word imaginable and in such a hysterical manner that I wondered if I was about to lose control of a situation that was barely 30 seconds old. One of them was particularly rabid and finally, as the encounter intensified, he moved toward me in a way that definitely felt threatening.
In short I was scared to death.
I took a step backward and placed my thumb on the keeper of my gun holster. The young man saw the move and stopped. Then he screamed at me, "You take that f—king gun out of that f—king holster and I’ll take it and shove it up your f—king ass!"
We stared at each other for five long seconds.
And I reflected on his words. And I decided that, in fact, he was absolutely right. If I took my gun from the holster I knew I could never shoot the man dead for illegally camping in a national park. On the other hand, this young fellow, in his current frenzied state, might very well take the revolver from me and kill me. I could almost see the headlines in next week’s Moab Times-Independent:
SEASONAL RANGER AT ARCHES SHOT UP THE ASS
BY ILLEGAL CAMPER...SERVICES ON FRIDAY
"OK," I said, taking a deep breath. "I’m going back to my patrol cruiser. I want both of you out of here in 30 minutes." Retreat seemed like a viable option. I backed off slowly, turned and walked back to the road. Had they been running up behind me I would never have heard them—the sound of my heart pounding in my ears was deafening.
I sat in my patrol car for 20 long minutes, still shaken but happy to have my ass intact. Finally, incredibly, here they came, packed up and in their car. One of them had calmed appreciably and I handed him the citation. He actually thanked me. His friend, however, was still out of control and kept slamming his fists into the headliner of his friend’s roof. I imagine damage to the vehicle surpassed the $50 fine.
I drove back to the Devils Garden, to my residence, slept poorly and wondered if I’d done the right thing. Had I been a coward or a wise man? I decided that for once, I’d been the latter. I never again came even close to a confrontation like that. Life, whether theirs or mine, was not worth the risk over an illegal camping infraction.
I don’t know all the facts in the New Mexico shooting but I would guess that fear and adrenalin and the rapid way uncontrolled events can unfold had more to do with the shooting than the character of the man who pulled the trigger or the man who allegedly provoked him. But a tragedy resulted that didn’t need to happen. There’s more to Life than collecting fees or paying them...I suggest we all range a bit more and fret a lot less.
THE NEW ORLEANS TRAGEDY, RFK & THE GNP
While all of us watched the unfolding destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina last month and the subsequent human suffering brought on, not just by the storm but from human neglect as well, a statement by the U.S. Secretary of Labor caught Ned Mudd’s eye and he passed it along to me. According to the news report:
Sept 6: The flooded city of New Orleans will see an unparalleled building boom, US Labor Secretary Elaine Chao confidently predicted after ordering the creation of 25,000 temporary jobs for evacuees.
It reminded me of a speech Robert Kennedy gave almost 30 years ago about the meaning of America’s Gross National Product, the way we measure the wealth of our nation. Kennedy said:
"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."
Where’s Bobby when we really need him?
STEPHANIE KORDAS
1967-2005
...Then Leaf goes down to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief.
So Dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
