Overlooked yet Brightly Shining: The Impacts of Ecological Light Pollution

Source: 1920x1080 Resolution Forest Milky Way Night Reflection over River 1080P Laptop Full HD Wallpaper - Wallpapers Den

The night sky used to be pure wonder.  A person would gaze upwards on a clear night and see a huge spectacle of stars and the soft glow of the brushstroke that is the Milky-Way.  The night was the pure opposite of day, it held safety for nocturnal animals and provided a respite for the species that spent their energy during the day.  What do you see when you go outside at night now?  How many stars do you see?  Is it thousands?  Hundreds? A couple dozen?  It is most certainly not the same night sky that your ancestors looked at hundreds of years ago.  What you probably see is only a smattering of the brightest stars and the glow of the nearest cities on the horizon.  The night has lost its darkness.  Light Pollution is to blame, which is defined as "a broad-scale phenomenon, with hundreds of thousands of light sources cumulatively contributing to increased nighttime illumination of the sky".  As the earth lights up at night, it becomes more and more difficult to see the stars and experience natural darkness on our planet.  The Earth's atmosphere reflects back the terrestrial light sources, creating an effect called sky-glow, which outcompetes the light from the stars and moon.

Light pollution is an issue that only grows worse; it is estimated that every year it expands by 3-6%.  In 2016, 1/3 of the Earth's population was unable to view the Milky Way; 3/5 Europeans and 4/5 North Americans cannot see the Milky Way when they step outside of their homes.  The proliferation of light pollution has been driven by affordability of new lighting and development of technologies that allow lights to be brighter.  As lights became cheaper, paradoxically the consumption and abundance increased exponentially, so that the potential savings of affordable technologies was never realized; this demonstrates an economic trend called Jevon's Paradox.  The newer cheaper lights (LEDS) emit blue-light wavelengths, which is reflected in our atmosphere more readily than other wavelengths and thus increases the amount of sky-glow at night.

For a long time, the only complaints regarding light pollution were regarding difficulties with astronomical observations and night-time ascetics.  Scientists viewing celestial bodies and looking to understand outer space were having a tougher time making their observations.  People around the globe noticed that the night sky was brighter and less beautiful to regard.  However, as time went on and the night sky continued to brighten, more effects became apparent that were more worrisome.  Nocturnal animals found less safety in the night then they were accustomed to.  Sleep cycles were disturbed and species were out when they should have been safely hidden in their burrows or dens.  Soon, it was found that ecosystems and biological processes worldwide were under threat of being significantly disturbed by the loss of natural darkness.

From Ferocious to Fido: The Complex and Elusive Pathways of Animal Domestication

It is an occurrence that many of us have experienced: the day that we come into contact with the questionable pet.  Perhaps we are at a someone's house who we do not know too well, and they decide to show us their boa constrictor.  Or, in the background of your boss's zoom screen, you see a large cage filled with colorful tropical birds.  Or maybe you are just scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, and you see a heartwarming video about a man and the raccoon that follows him around his farm.  You enjoy seeing the creature scurry, slither, or flutter but something scratches in the back of your mind.   Is it appropriate that this animal is kept as a pet?  The animal seems calm and at ease, but does that mean it is domesticated?  What exactly is a domesticated animal?  How do we separate them from wild animals?  The questionable pet brings up confusion about which animals are supposed to live with us or in our society, and which are better off being left in the wilds where we found them. 

Is this a domesticated animal?
Source: Wikipedia

How about this one?
Source: Flickr

These questions are all valid ones because domestication is not a simple concept to wrap your head around.  Determining exactly when a species becomes domesticated is a convoluted and difficult task.  This may give you pause; we cannot tell domesticated and wild animals apart?  You could glance at your dog, asleep in their fluffy bed after a difficult afternoon of eating kibble and barking at nothing, and you think, "Well, there would be no mistaking Harvey over there with a wolf.  Why is there any confusion?"  However, the dog has had thousands of years of change thanks to domestication, forming it's obvious differences from the wolf.  But when exactly did the dog stop being wild and start being domestic?  What exact traits had to change in order to precipitate this shift?  Do all domesticated animals share these traits?  These finer details are what this article hopes to explore.

The Coronavirus's Impact on our Parks and the Environment

Many have flocked to the outdoors during the pandemic
Source: 303magazine.com

The Coronavirus is affecting everything.  This statement is one I am getting a bit tired of reading in the news, but it is unfortunately true.  Mankind has expanded to the scale that our reach affects every corner of the globe; thus this new virus that is affect all of us will also be affecting the entire planet.  You have no doubt read countless articles speculating on the impacts on the economy, the education system, the health care system, and government.  But what about the natural environment and places like parks and reserves?  How will they fare amongst this global pandemic?

Simple logic may lead you to infer that parks and other natural places will do quite well.  Without all the people mucking about, it would make sense that these ecosystems would thrive.  But people are also the protectors of landscapes, whether they be rangers, scientists, wardens, or volunteers.  Just as many of them have been sidelined by the creeping virus.  This makes the answer more complicated than a simple "good" or "bad", and in reality we can only really speculate.  Like most everything else, we will have to wait until time has passed to know how things are going to end up.  Yet even with all of this uncertainty, it is safe to say that the parks and the like are under threat under the coronavirus pandemic.

The Burned Land Down Under

Flames were coming for people in their beds, in the middle of the night, announced with the dire and haunting words we became used to over these terrible months.  "It's too late to leave; shelter in place" -Lisa Pryor

Australian Wildfires Illuminate the Night
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It may seem distant history, at the rate with which the world moves from disaster to tragedy, but a few months ago the world was watching the progress of massive wildfires that blanketed Australia.  We saw the pictures of charred landscapes, ashen ruins of homes, and burnt animals approaching responders for help.   We read the statistics of the unprecedented natural catastrophe that was sweeping across the smallest inhabited continent.  Three thousand homes destroyed in New South Wales, 46 million hectares (or 114 million acres) of land burned, and thirty-four lives lost.

Yet, while news flashes kept us abreast of the extent of the destruction, the reason for this tragic disaster was more elusive.  Why were these wildfires so bad?  Was this year somehow different than other years?  Will the fires continue to get worse?  These were questions that most articles did not try to answer.  Those affected were too focused on survival to worry about causes or consequences.  Thankfully, the fires have been subdued for the time being and restoration has begun.  Now Australia and the world can take a breath to wonder why this devastating force arrived at this place and time.

The Wilderness Problem: The Need for a Modern Reevaluation

A Wilderness Scene from Denali National Park

The Grand Tetons, the geysers at Yellowstone, the African Savanna, the Great Barrier Reef, the Southern Alps of New Zealand; wilderness areas like these have become cherished in the popular mindset of recent years.  Tourists and adventurers flock to them in order to witness breathtaking views and rare ecosystems.  Environmentalists use them as lightning rods for their causes, citing the damage and threats to these places to push through legislation and protection.  We treasure wilderness now.  We use it to define our nations and utilize them for once-in-a-lifetime experiences of self-discovery.  It was not always this way.  The wilderness used to be thought of as a place of horrors, of danger, and of the other.  It was where children went missing, where monsters loomed, and where Jesus was tempted by Satan.  But, beginning in the 19th century in America, wilderness began to be thought of a finite resource and one worth celebrating.  It became a way to escape the pressures of modern society and this escape was being threatened by the ever encroaching mechanisms of industry.  The American frontier was disappearing and the protection of the few remaining pockets of wilderness became a desperate cause.

Eventually what emerged from this shift in attitude was the environmental and conservation movements.  Natural resources were no longer only to be exploited.  Wild places were to be preserved for their own sake.  Yet the otherness surrounding the wild remained.  Humans extolled the virtues of wilderness and nature, but they remained something apart from us that we could only ruin.  We created a dichotomy between the natural and the artificial or human.  Natural places became pure and pristine, while anything that contained the stain of human influence was deemed corrupted.

Recently, J.B. Callicott coined the phrase "the Received Wilderness Idea" to describe this way of thinking.  Its principles are simple.  Wilderness is nature as its most pure, with limited human influence, and such influence must be kept at an absolute minimum to preserve its purity.  On its surface, this philosophy seems a logical way to a manage wild places.  In truth, the Received Wilderness Idea is one of hidden falsehoods and flawed logic.  Despite our best intentions, human beings will always influence the natural environment and vice versa.  Creating walls around natural areas, physical and political, does not preserve them but isolates them to waiting dangers and isolates human beings from the natural around them.

Wilderness is in actuality a complete human construct.  While these areas may seem devoid of human interference, it is nonetheless there under the surface.  Wilderness exists because of the human histories of conquest, expansion, and relocation.  And now wilderness is deeply affected by our policies and impacts.  If human beings worldwide accepted the connection that wilderness has to mankind, it would greatly improve the manner in which we interact and manage these landscapes.  Like the shift in thinking that happened during the dawn of environmentalism, we need to change our mentality towards the wild and the remote.