In a typical year end ritual - making a list and checking it twice, resolution and atonement, taking stock, inventory, the urge to embalm and encapsulate the old year before burying it - we have this list of books from the Easterblogg (via CCB).

One book on his list, The Beast in the Garden, prompted this response.

Nature would be baffled by the notion that Homo sapiens preservationists want animals that attack people not only exempt from hunting but assisted in expanding their ranges and, inevitably, attacking more people. Nature operates on kill-or-be-killed; to nature, it would seem perfectly natural to gun down mountain lions and grizzlies on sight. The Beast in the Garden makes the case for reasonable preservation of predators, but also goes into detail on the sickening number of greener-than-thou types who, in the wake of the Colorado death, showed more sympathy for the lion than the boy. There was green fury that the lion was found and shot. And Baron reports that one of the boy's high-school teachers actually complained that the boy's body should not have been taken for burial, but left in the woods for the lion to finish. After all, it was only feeding.

Many counties in the west, great plains, southeast and southwest have been losing population for a century. Cities and burbs are growing. Certain rural locations are gaining population but even there they tend to cluster cheek by jowl rather than spread across the land.

In my neighborhood, the Golden Trout Wilderness area of the S. Sierra Nevada, Sequoia Park etc., population dropped so much that towns disappeared. My closest town, Milo, is nothing more than an inappropriately fancy bridge across the N. fork of the Tule river. The stores, schools and homes are gone. They even moved the post office building 20 miles away to another town. Every summer European tourists show up looking for Milo, once cited on European (especially German) tourist maps as having exceptionally clean air or something. The name can still be found on maps but there's no there there. Most of the local population have lived here less than 25 years, don't even know Milo ever existed, and treat the German tourists like they are nuts.

The old population made its life here but their urbanized replacements bring money with them and seldom venture out of their yards. The land is de-peopled more than it has been for 10,000 years. The recreation visitors in summer only go to selected spots along well worn paths. The old locals and forest service personnel are the only ones who ever go onto the land, and they conspire with one another to keep the tourists, and even new residents, away from beautiful places, giving them an ersatz wilderness experience, the Disney version, instead. They don't know the difference, can't appreciate natural systems and can't visit without truck loads of equipment to create a miniature urban environment wherever they go.

None are here after Labor Day and in this deep winter time the roads are closed except to local traffic. The high passes and mountain roads to camp grounds aren't cleared of snow. Wildlife migrates to lower altitudes and their predators follow. Everything from wild boar to bears (a sort of boar in many ways) return to the valleys where they sometimes encounter people. You may not see them but they see you. If you are aware of spoor you can construct a menagerie in your mind, and if you are diligent and go a bit feral yourself you may be rewarded with sightings.

Every local mountain and meadow has at least two names; the Yokut Indian name and the settler name. The Yokuts knew every nook and cranny since they hunted and gathered everywhere. They managed the land, mostly by fire, and in a sense the area was more properly a garden than a wilderness, a larder and supply house from which they withdrew the food and materials they needed. There were more of them than there are of us now. They succumbed to the guns, germs and steel of the Euro settlers and the places got new names. Some farmed, some ranched, some logged and some mined the area and in a sense were like the Yokuts in that they were spread out over the land withdrawing sustenance, having children, truly inhabiting the places and forming intimate relationships with them.

As a thought experiment imagine if it had happened the other way. Imagine if the American Indians had sailed to Europe with guns, germs and steel and eliminated 90-95% of the population in the 15th century. Imagine the 'wilderness' that would exist in central, northern and eastern Europe, depeopled for 200-300 years while the population of the conquerors grew to a level that could begin to replace them. All the quaint villages tourists visit each year would never have been built or long ago rotted to the ground. Still, they once existed and people once covered the land. Here and there the ruins of an old castle would be found. In some places Roman ruins would be found too.

Don't think about it too hard. It's a very loose analogy, but perhaps a glimpse of a truer picture of the world can be caught in peripheral vision and a glimmering of understanding will dawn that the idea of wilderness, a de-peopled land that can either be exploited or preserved, is part of the Eurocentric denial of that old genocide. This place has never before had so few people and never had people so indifferent to the place. They don't live here, they live in the landscape of their minds and only venture out of their homes along well worn paths to provision spots. Then they scurry back to their dens and entertainments, living an urban life in a rural place. Wilderness is an urban concept, a name for a de-peopled virtual reality fantasy. For true residents it's just home.

The number of top predators such as Puma and Bear have increased since people don't go onto the land anymore and don't hunt. Their numbers had declined mainly because they were hunted. People thought this a public service. In a funny way such people were the progenitors of the ones who now clamor for preservation and reintroduction of predators, priggish meddlers filled with themselves but deficient in knowledge. They are always with us. The human tribe always produces a bumper crop of these types.

The trend to denser living and more de-peopled places is unstoppable short of a collapse of civilization. For the next few decades population will continue to rise but ever fewer will be intimately engaged with the places where they live. Median age will increase as will timidity. Then population will begin to decline and further concentrate. Lands that have been occupied for 10,000 years will be uninhabited. New ecosystems will evolve as the species imported from all over the world sort themselves out. Many old species will go extinct as insects, diseases and invasive species of several sorts ravage the defenseless locals. In time a succession will lead to a climax ecosystem but it's very hard to guess what it will be like. Technically it will be a wilderness since it will be de-peopled, but it won't be preserved, it will be profoundly and irrevocably altered in ways humans couldn't begin to match.

» Wilderness expanding? from City Comforts Blog
UPDATE: Don't miss this comment and perspective on "new wilderness" at Muck and Mystery. Interesting. I'd be curious to get a sense of some numbers. ••• Greg Easterbrook's notes The Beast in the Garden by David Baron. In 1991, a...[read more]
Tracked: December 28, 2003 01:40 PM