Rethinking America's Best Idea

The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it...The fight for the Yosemite Park and other forest parks and reserves is by no means over; nor would the fighting cease, however much the boundaries were contracted.  Every good thing, great and small, needs defense.  The smallest forest reserve, and the first I ever heard of, was in the Garden of Eden; and though its boundaries were drawn by the Lord, and embraced only one tree, yet even so moderate a reserve as this was attacked.  

-John Muir

An Example of North American Forest and Mountain Range
Source: Americanforests.org

When the United States set aside land for the world's first national parks, the country changed how people interacted with nature forever.  During the era of American expansion, when land was being purchased, settled, and developed at unprecedented rates, environmentally conscious citizens sought to protect places that they deemed to have natural and inherent beauty.  Thanks to the efforts of men and women like John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, these places were cordoned off from the bulldozer that was industry.  Surveys were completed, boundaries were drawn, and political fences were erected in the hope that such wildlands would remain free and pure.  The effort was deemed a huge success; the national parks became a part of the American identity and documentarian Ken Burns declared them "America's best idea."  Yet the matter is not settled.  Official words on paper and good intentions are not enough to keep our landscapes safe.

Forces, both natural and man-made, continue to conspire to endanger the scenery that our predecessors set aside.  Agencies and groups labor desperately to preserve environments in the same conditions as our ancestors found them.  With encroaching forces like climate change and pollution assaulting them constantly, such endeavors can seem to be an uphill battle.  To be blunt, our efforts to preserve in an era of change are impossible tasks.

Preservation, in the vein of its nineteenth-century creators, is an indefensible goal.  Its central ideas of a self-maintaining wilderness and ideal static sceneries are flawed and need to be done away with.  Wilderness, as defined by the Wilderness Act of 1964 as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor," does not exist.  Man's reach now extends beyond his gaze.  Though a region may appear remote, wild, and unspoiled, it is always threatened by the same impinging forces that jeopardize every other part of the planet.  To be successful in our mission to protect natural scenery, we must do away with antiquated notions about change and set new priorities for our lands.

Conservation Versus Preservation: A Formative Debate

Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir at Yosemite, two champions of conservation and preservation respectively
Source: Shout! Magazine

In the mid-nineteenth century, the American environmental movement began and, for the first time, citizens began to think of nature as a resource to be protected.  The first national parks were created and political leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt lauded America's natural spaces as its greatest assets.  People flocked to these places like never before and countless areas were saved from overconsumption and development.  This period is thought of as a triumph for the environment, but there was a fair amount of discord as well.  There was an internal debate within the movement between its most prolific leaders.  The argument was whether these natural spaces should be conserved or preserved for the future.

To many, this may seem an odd debate because, in common speech, conservation and preservation are used interchangeably.  Back in the formative years of environmentalism, the two words represented different ideas about how best to manage nature.  Conservationists sought to stem the overexploitation of natural resources through wise harvest.  They believed long-term use of resources is more economically rewarding than immediate profits and destruction of the resource.  Conservationists were primarily motivated by economics and were focused on valuable or game species, or upon advantageous results such as slowing soil erosion and protection of water supplies.  Preservationists, on the other hand, endeavored to protect nature from any economic use or development whatsoever.  This group was only concerned with the preservation of an area "as is" and did not single out any specific species or resource.  Natural ecosystems were seen as self-maintaining and were only to be protected from human influence.

The two groups had the same overall goal.  They wanted to protect the majestic wilderness and natural resources that America contained.  What differed was how best to accomplish this goal.  In some ways, the debate continues to this day.  Perhaps that is to our own detriment, as the old views about nature may not hold relevance in today's environment.  For now, let us just explore how this early debate shaped the future of how this country interacts with its ecosystem. 

An Update

Hello to you all.

Its been a little while since I have written anything for this blog.  That is because I have been busy with my job as a Park Ranger for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.  The summer is our busiest time and the park that I work at has been swamped with people, projects, and general activity.  I love my job because it keeps me outside, allows me to improve on beautify natural landscapes, and lets me help people enjoy the wild space that they have come to witness.  I have found this summer season to be hectic, hot, stressful, and extremely satisfying.

I have missed working on my blog.  As the summer winds down and I have much more time on my hands, I plan to return and write some more pieces for anyone to enjoy.  My job has taken the majority of my time and attention, I think it would be appropriate to write about parks for my first few articles.  Managing and maintaining nature parks and reserves for the general public is a demanding and complicated job.  Its a balancing act between protecting the natural environment and making the area accessible to all those who want to access the space.  How best to accomplish these goals have been under debate since the creation of the first National Parks in the late 19th century.

I would like to explore some of these arguments and debates that have followed the creation and development of our parks.  I hope I can bring a knowledgeable viewpoint to the discussion because of my time working in the field.  In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about parks, specifically America's, I would recommend Ken Burns' documentary about US National Park Service.  It is an incredible piece of film.

Thank you for reading and I hope to bring you more material soon!  

Should Zoos Exist?

Everyone remembers the day when they were taken to the zoo as a child.  The feeling of happiness that took hold of us as we gazed at majestic and exotic animals while snacking on cotton candy or ice cream is one that we have held onto tightly.  Zoos and aquariums are considered institutions in our society on par with parks, museums, theaters, and libraries.  This is because we get a great thrill by coming face to face with exotic and rare creatures.  But is the entertainment value of such places enough of a reason for them to exist?  All of these establishments rely on captive animals in order to subsist.  If we are to continue to keep these animals away from their natural habitat and lifestyle then zoos must prove that their existence is necessary to our society.  The question that I would like to explore is thus, do organizations like zoos provide enough positive services to both humans and animals to offset the negative impact placed upon the captive animals that these organizations confine?

I think there are three camps of people when it comes to zoos and like places.  There are those that believe that zoos provide essential services to education and conservation, there are those that believe that zoos are unnecessary institutions that profit off of animal cruelty, and there are those that do not think about the subject except to dreamily remember a warm summer's day spent looking at chimpanzees.  Unfortunately, I think most of the population are in this third category and I think that is unfair to the animals that we have kept away from their native homes.  We owe it to these creatures to really explore this question until we have reached a solid conclusion.

Source: ParentMap

For Help Understanding Animal Behavior, Look to Occam's Razor

A few years ago, while I was still attending college, I attended a talk by the famous animal researcher Dame Jane Goodall.  During the presentation, a video was shown of a captive-born chimpanzee being released into the wild.  The chimpanzee slowly walked out of the small cage that it had been transported in, looked around at the vast jungle that surrounded it, and promptly threw its arms around one of the humans that had brought it to its new home.  Close to where I was sitting, one of my fellow students cooed with delight, "Aw look at that!"  They said, "He's thanking her!"

Internally I cringed, for that person had done what I had always been taught to avoid during my education; they had anthropomorphized an animal's behavior.  Anthropomorphization is the attribution of human qualities, traits, and thoughts to non-humans, often without sound justification.  In this case, the audience member believed that, by hugging, the chimpanzee was thanking the researcher because that is what a human being would do.  In reality, chimpanzees hug when they are stressed and afraid because doing so releases dopamine in the brain and thus relieves stress.  The chimpanzee in the video was terrified due to it being dropped in a foreign jungle and it clung onto a nearby person to calm itself.  The situation is a bit less cute when examined closer, but it is important to understand the reality of animal encounters.

A few weeks ago, I came across a 2010 article by Sara Shettleworth titled, "Clever Animals and Killjoy Explanations in Comparative Psychology".  In the article, Dr. Shettleworth describes her alarm at an increase in anthropomorphization in animal behavior and psychology.  Modern research in those fields have discovered that many animal species possess cognitive and behavioral abilities that were once thought to only be available to humans.  An easy way to understand these newfound abilities is to attribute "human-like" qualities to the species in question.  However this way of thinking is oversimplified.

A stressed chimpanzee being consoled by Jane Goodall
Source: The Daily Mail

By assigning broad and anthropomorphic explanations to phenomena, the researchers and scientific writers are actually stifling further investigation.  The behaviors in question are not enigmatic and mystical facilities but instead complex cognitive abilities that are built upon rudimentary mechanisms.  The anthropomorphic explanations, while they may be exciting headlines for readers, are a disservice to the real fascinating processes at work.

Empathy No Longer Sets Humans Apart

Human beings want to believe that we are special.  We fervently cling to the ideas that our cleverness and powerful emotions are something unusual and extraordinary in the natural world.  Unfortunately science does not seem to hold humans in as high esteem.  Evolution, after all, is a completely random and directionless system.  It is also an incredibly connected system and the roots of many behaviors and traits can be found strewn across vast numbers of different species and families.  The more that we look for what makes us special, the more we find that we are not.  In the disciplines of cognition and intelligence especially, the borders that long separated humans and animals are becoming blurred.  Scientists are now finding startling similarities between animal brains and our own.

The historically famous, but incorrect, picture showing evolution having direction and culminating in the creation of man
Source: Unknown

If there is one thing that mankind has been proud of, it is empathy.  We have often bragged about our ability to feel for others and to offer help to those that need it.  Often, our art and literature paints the animal world as cruel and uncaring, while humans alone are able to work together to aid one-another.  Unfortunately for these compelling narratives, cognitive researchers have found empathy to exist in a number of animal species and believe that we are thinking of empathy in the wrong way.  In truth, empathy is a simple neurological process that serves as an internal rewards system for social behaviors.  Humans have deluded ourselves into believing what we were experiencing was some isolated phenomenon unlike any other.  This has clouded how we have viewed the cognitive abilities of our fellow animals.