by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 18, 2017 | Alienation & Mental Health, Human Supremacy, Listening to the Land
Featured image: Mauna Loa, night time view (Photo: Rustedstrings/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 3.0)
by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance
So many indigenous people have told me that the levels of sustainability their traditional cultures achieved prior to the arrival of colonizers were based on lessons learned from non-humans. Implicit in these lessons is the truth that humans depend on non-humans. This dependence is not limited to the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat. This dependence sinks into our very souls.
For many indigenous people I have listened to, the basic reality of human dependence demands that humans regard non-humans, regard life, regard the universe with deep humility.
If we simply learn to listen, we will hear non-humans demonstrating humility everywhere. Trees know they are nothing without soil, so they build forests as monuments to soil health – collecting, storing, and restoring nutrients to their life-giver. Salmon know they are nothing without forests to hold river banks together, so they swim deep into the cold oceans to feed, bring their bodies back upriver to die, and, in death, feed the forests. Phytoplankton know they are nothing without a climate that allows warm and cold ocean waters to mix, producing currents that bring them their food. So, phytoplankton feed the salmon that feed the forests that store carbon that has the potential to destroy the climate that feeds the phytoplankton.
Approach non-humans with humility, and you may find them willing to teach you.
******
It was the stars who put me in my place. I know this, locating myself in my memories of cold nights in the open air and my sleeping bag, watching the clear sky from the shoulders of sacred Mauna Kea in Hawai’i. I rest north to south. The Southern Cross sits low on the horizon, just above the outline of my toes warmly wrapped in down. I arch my back and look high above me where Polaris holds the sky steady. To my right, the sun pulled the darkness over like blankets on a bed and fell asleep. In the space between Venus and Orion’s Belt, there are more shooting stars than I have wishes. To my left, a faint anxiety grows. When the sun wakes, its siblings – the stars – will disappear.
“I” diminish in these moments. My mind quiets and and there are only the gifts the stars give.
Stars are so fundamental to our existence they give us the ability to contemplate the process that allows us to perceive them. Perhaps, this is why stars are so beautiful. When we view them, we see the beginning of everything.
Stars are the oldest nuclear reactors. The gases they burn produce energy at such great magnitudes they are visible on Earth from hundreds of thousands of lightyears away. They burn like this for time unfathomable until they die in great explosions. When stars explode, the violence alters hydrogen and helium to shower the universe with materials like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, and sulfur. These materials are the basis of life.
Stars give me the ability to experience. I can experience because I have a body. The elemental showers dying stars produce have organized- first as neutrons and protons, then as atoms, and finally as air, water, soil, stone, and flesh – to form my body. But, stars don’t form only human bodies, they form bones, fur, and fins; skin, scales, and exoskeletons; mountains, oceans, and the sky.
Stars give the universe the first wisdom: For there to be life, there must be death. After a life spent in service as a sun, warming a community of planets, a star dies. It is a violent death – a death that destroys a solar system. But, it is a necessary death. A death that transforms the old into a possibility for the new.
******
My last essay in this ecopsychology series “The Destruction of Experience: How Ecopsychology Has Failed” generated some curious responses from, specifically, ecopsychologists and ecotherapists. Many of them were provoked to defensiveness, denial, or both by my words. In fact, one commentator Thomas J. Doherty, a psychotherapist, was moved to write an essay for the San Diego Free Press where he characterized my report of the failure of ecopsychology as “greatly exaggerated.”
The responses suggest that some of my readers felt like I was attacking their life’s work. Of course, I was. Ecopsychologists, however, need not feel alone in their failure. With the destruction of the planet intensifying at an ever-faster pace, we are all failing.
As I’ve sought to understand the responses I received, I’ve realized that many students of ecopsychology employ a different definition of “success” than I do. Quite simply, their definition is infected with human supremacism.
One way to understand the difference is to ask: Would extinct species characterize reports of the failure of ecopsychology as “greatly exaggerated?” Would Pinta Island Tortoises, Pyrenean Ibexes, Falklands Wolves, Rocky Mountain Lotuses, Great Auks, Passenger Pigeons or any of the 200 species that were pushed to extinction yesterday, the 200 species that were pushed to extinction today, or the 200 species that will be pushed to extinction tomorrow characterize reports of the failure of ecopsychology as “greatly exaggerated”?
Lonesome George Pinta giant tortoise Santa Cruz (Source: putneymark/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)
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What is human supremacism?
In his 2016 book The Myth of Human Supremacy, Derrick Jensen coined the term “human supremacism” and gave human animals the analysis we so badly need to understand the murder of our non-human kin.
Human supremacism is a system of power in which humans dominate non-humans to derive material benefit. Agriculture is a classic result of human supremacism Agriculture requires clearing the land of every living being in order to plant and harvest a single crop which is then used to feed humans.
Human supremacism makes the fossil fuel industry possible. To produce electricity, to fuel cars, planes, and ships, to produce fertilizers for their crops, humans poison water, rip the tops off mountains, carve scars into landscapes, and fundamentally alter the climate. Even so-called “green energy” is produced by humans dominating non-humans as fragile desert ecosystems are destroyed for wind farms, rivers are dammed for hydroelectricity, and the land is gutted for metals and minerals like copper and aluminum to be used in solar panels.
The power humans have gained over non-humans is rooted in human supremacists’ maintenance of a monopoly of the means of violence over non-humans and their human allies who dare to challenge human supremacism.
The history of wolf-hunting in civilized nations, as just one example, demonstrates this monopoly. Despite centuries of demonization, wolves pose little direct threat to humans. However, when agriculture encroaches on the homes of wolves’ traditional prey causing these species’ populations to collapse, wolves will eat domesticated animals. Human supremacists throughout history have responded with wolf extermination campaigns. The extinction of so many wolf species while many other wolf species tinker on the edge of extinction is testament to the wrath of human supremacism.
Deep ecologist, Neil Evernden, pointed out that scientists in vivisection labs cut the vocal cords of the animals they experiment on. If humans heard the screams of their non-human kin, they would not murder them. Human supremacism takes this practice to the psychological level. You can physically cut the vocal cords of individual non-humans you plan to torture. Or, you can achieve a total silencing of the non-human world if you convince whole human societies that non-humans are incapable of communicating, incapable of screaming, incapable, even, of feeling pain.
Human supremacism cuts the vocal cords of the non-human world, and achieves this silencing, by developing cultural myths teaching that non-humans are “resources” to be used by humans. Living forests are no longer living forests; they are so many square feet of board lumber. Wild rivers are no longer wild rivers; they are so many cubic meters of water. Old-growth prairies are no longer old-growth prairies, they are so many acres of tillable farmland.
Another myth human supremacism propagates is the notion that humans are superior to everyone else. Because humans are superior, human domination of non-humans is completely justified and natural. Jensen shows how strongly humans cling to this sense of superiority. He writes, “Human supremacists – at this point, almost everyone in this culture – have shown time and again that the maintenance of their belief in their own superiority, and the entitlement that springs from this belief, are more important to them than the well-being or existences of everyone else.”
Human supremacists cannot tolerate anyone who reminds them of the insanity of human supremacy. They systematically annihilate traditional cultures and indigenous peoples with sustainable cultures based on human humility. Despite their best efforts to silence the non-human world, on a fundamental level the task is impossible and human supremacists come to hate non-humans for refusing to die quietly. And no one dies quietly. Human supremacists hate the reminders, so they must destroy the reminders, and in the destruction they are reminded again. If we do not stop human supremacists, their vicious cycle will only end when there is total silence.
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The responses I received for daring to suggest that ecopsychology has failed reveal that the maintenance of human supremacism is more important to many ecopsychologists than ensuring the survival of life on earth.
Let me be clear: There are positive trends within ecopsychology. At its best, ecopsychology uncovers the connection of human souls to the soul of the world, illustrates human dependence on the non-human, and demands effective action to protect the soul of the world and the non-humans we depend on. At its worst, ecopsychology privileges human psychological health at the expense of non-humans, seeks to use the natural world to promote false feelings of peace, becomes an anesthetic in the face of planetary collapse, and is infected with insidious human supremacy.
Ecopsychology’s human supremacist infection is as understandable as it is unforgivable. All of us born into the dominant culture have been indoctrinated to the central tenets of human supremacism. Radical psychologist R.D. Laing, who spent a brilliant career trying to understand how we arrived at a moment where humans were empowered to destroy the planet through forces like thermonuclear war, explained how deeply this indoctrination runs. He wrote, “Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves with high I.Q.s if possible.”
Despite these high I.Q.s that even good-hearted ecopsychologists are equipped with, human supremacism is so entrenched that it is almost invisible. On his way to ripping the mask off human supremacism, Jensen wrote in his study of hatred The Culture of Make Believe that “hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion…” And, when ecopsychologists place the primacy of human mental, emotional, spiritual, and even, physical health over the continued existence of forests, mountains, rivers, non-human species, and the planet’s capacity to support life, we must extend Jensen’s idea to conclude: Hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, it feels like ecopsychology.
Too many ecopsychologists, ecotherapists, and so-called environmentalists spend the vast majority of their time devising means to promote human mental health and feelings of peace, hope and acceptance through phenomena like what Doherty calls in his essay “nature contacts.”
Reducing non-humans to “nature contacts” objectifies them. Human supremacist ecopsychologists view living forests as therapy tools. They view rivers as anti-depressants. When humans view forests and rivers as objects to use to gain mental health, they act like men who view women as objects to use for sexual gratification, and white people who view people of color as objects to use for economic benefit.
But, living forests and wild rivers live for themselves.The world is not filled with “nature contacts.” It is filled with aspen groves, great-horned owls, elk, black bears, pinyon-juniper forests, rainbow trout, this smooth blue pebble, that red rock canyon, a particular wisp of fog moving through sage brush. In short, the world is filled with living beings who exist for their own purposes that you and I may never understand.
Ecopsychologists demonstrate where their concern lies through their actions, or what they actually do in their day-to-day lives. When students of ecopsychology are more concerned with how the natural world improves human mental health than they are with the murder of the natural world, they are acting as human supremacists. When their day-to-day lives are spent leading “wilderness immersion trips” for the sake of healing human minds while that very wilderness is threatened with human-induced collapse, they are acting as human supremacists. When their day-to-day lives are spent in the clinic office helping clients “cope” and “adjust to” the insanity of civilized culture while that culture threatens the existence of life on earth, they are acting as human supremacists.
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I am writing this series because I know there are students of ecopsychology who want to wield ecopsychology’s insights to make the environmental movement more effective, as I do. But to do this, we must be willing to take an honest assessment of ecopsychology that goes beyond human health, to the health of the natural world.
Exploring the different definitions of ecopsychological success helps us make this assessment. It is only possible to consider ecopsychology a success if you subscribe to a liberal, human supremacist worldview.
The human supremacist definition of success begins with what appears, at first glance, to be a series of obvious conclusions. First, human actions are causing planetary collapse. and humans actions flow from human psyches. So, it follows that changing human psyches is the path to stopping planetary collapse. For human supremacist ecopsychologists, planetary collapse is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy for the trauma it causes humans.
While I have no problem with the conclusion that human psyches need to change, I do have a problem with the means liberal ecopsychologists think will achieve this change. Most people on the Left attach positive connotations to “being liberal” and may be surprised by my criticism of the liberal worldview. Nevertheless, one reason planetary collapse is intensifying is the failure of the Left to forsake liberalism for a radical analysis.
The brilliant author Lierre Keith has devised an accurate articulation of the liberal worldview. She explains that, for liberals, the basic social unit is the individual. For liberals, individuals can be understood separate from the social environment constructing them. Liberals believe that attitudes are the sources and solutions of oppression, that pure human thought is the prime mover of social life, and, therefore, education and rational argument are the best engines for social change.
Liberal, human supremacist ecopsychology, because it embraces the notion that the basic social unit is the individual, focuses on healing human psyches one individual at a time. Because liberal ecopsychologists obsess over human thought as the primary culprit in psychopathology, they insist that individual education and rational argument are the best ways to heal widespread, cultural psychopathology. The prevalence of ecotherapy, whether its the healing of individuals in the clinic office, on wilderness immersion trips, or simple talk-therapy sessions conducted outside, is the result of a liberal belief that individual education will save the world.
The liberal, human supremacist worldview allows for ecopsychological success to be achieved on a personal and individual level. For liberal ecopsychologists every person, who alleviates depression with walks in a forest, or engages in grief work to come to acceptance of mass extinction, or finds a personal sense of joy amidst the destruction, is a success.
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My definition of success, on the other hand, is biocentric and radical. A biocentric definition of ecopsychological success recognizes that non-humans have souls, too, that human souls and non-human souls are expressions of Life’s soul. And, with these souls, comes a right to exist on their own terms. Humans are responsible for planetary collapse and changing human psyches is necessary to stop the collapse. But, the biocentric definition of success recognizes that the human psyche is fundamentally dependent on relationships with non-humans. So, the development of healthy human psyches requires, before anything else, a healthy biosphere.
My definition is also radical. Though most people misunderstand “radical” to mean “extreme,” radical simply means “getting to the roots.” For radicals, “getting to the roots” means understanding, and then dismantling, oppressive power structures on a global level. As part of this, radicals see groups and classes as the basic social unit. An individual’s group or class socially constructs the psyche. Most importantly, radicals understand that material power – the physical ability to coerce – is the prime mover of society. Social change, then, requires organized resistance geared at wielding power.
While I am very happy for individuals with access to existent natural communities who alleviate their mental illnesses through ecotherapy, these individual victories will be more and more difficult to come by so long as more and more natural communities are destroyed. As natural communities are destroyed, rates of human psychopathology will accelerate. Humans will become evermore insane while they cause ecological collapse and, causing ecological collapse, they ensure the impossibility of the physical survival of life.
Liberalism – with its individualism – and human supremacism – with the narcissism it facilitates in the human species – encourages ecopsychologists to ask “What can I do?” This question is no longer adequate. A biocentric, radical analysis pushes us beyond asking “What can I do?” to ask: “What needs to be done?”
More than just human individuals need to be saved. Human cultures where widespread psychopathology is impossible need to be created. To achieve these cultures requires dismantling the power structure causing ecological collapse, the power structure crushing sustainable cultures, and the power structure thwarting efforts to recreate sustainable cultures. Civilization – defined as a culture resulting from and producing humans living in populations so dense they require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life – is this power structure.
Civilization must be dismantled. This will not be achieved in the mind. Civilization is not an emotional state. It is not a misunderstanding. It will not be cured with rational argument.
Civilization is maintained by force. Men with guns and bombs ensure that business is conducted as usual. These guns and bombs give human supremacists power. They give human supremacists the ability to coerce everyone else. Human supremacists gain their guns and bombs, the physical force they require to protect civilization, through destruction of natural communities. Guns and bombs require mines, pipelines, and factories and the pollution mines, pipelines, and factories produce. To deprive human supremacists of their power requires depriving human supremacists of their physical ability to exploit natural communities. It requires dismantling mines, pipelines, and factories.
The question is, what are we waiting for?
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In the end, we are waiting for death. This death can be psychological. We can let the misguided hope in ineffective tactics die. We can let the mistaken belief that human well-being on a collapsing planet is possible die. We can let the insane insistence that we are more valuable than non-humans die.
Or, all of us will die.
I return to the stars. The stars illuminate our radical dependence on the non-human world for our existence. The stars teach that death brings new life. Death can be painful. I’m sure the death of a star, and the incineration of a solar system, is incredibly painful. But, after the pain, after the death of the old, a new life begins. Human supremacism must die, so a new human humility can begin.
Will Falk moved to the West Coast from Milwaukee, WI where he was a public defender. His first passion is poetry and his work is an effort to record the way the land is speaking. He feels the largest and most pressing issue confronting us today is the destruction of natural communities. He received a Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego Chapter, 2016 Journalism award. He is currently living in Utah.
To repost this or other DGR original writings, please contact newsservice@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 12, 2017 | Climate Change, Listening to the Land
by Jason Hickel / Local Futures
It’s getting hot out there. For a stretch of 16 months running through August 2016, new global temperature records were set every month.[1] Ice cover in the Arctic sea hit a new low this past summer, at 525,000 square miles less than normal. [2] And apparently we’re not doing much to stop it: according to Professor Kevin Anderson, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists, we’ve already blown our chances of keeping global warming below the “safe” threshold of 1.5 degrees. [3]
If we want to stay below the upper ceiling of 2 degrees, though, we still have a shot. But it’s going to take a monumental effort. Anderson and his colleagues estimate that in order to keep within this threshold, we need to start reducing emissions by a sobering 8-10% per year, from now until we reach “net zero” in 2050. [4] If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, here’s the clincher: efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies will only win us reductions of about 4% per year at most.
How to make up the difference is one of the biggest questions of the 21st century. There are a number of proposals out there. One is to capture the CO2 that pours out of our power stations, liquefy it, and store it in chambers deep under the ground. Another is to seed the oceans with iron to trigger huge algae blooms that will absorb CO2. Others take a different approach, such as putting giant mirrors in space to deflect some of the sun’s rays, or pumping aerosols into the stratosphere to create man-made clouds.
Unfortunately, in all of these cases either the risks are too dangerous, or we don’t have the technology yet.
This leaves us in a bit of a bind. But while engineers are scrambling to come up with grand geo-engineering schemes, they may be overlooking a simpler, less glamorous solution. It has to do with soil.
Soil is the second biggest reservoir of carbon on the planet, next to the oceans. It holds four times more carbon than all the plants and trees in the world. But human activity like deforestation and industrial farming – with its intensive ploughing, monoculture and heavy use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides – is ruining our soils at breakneck speed, killing the organic materials that they contain. Now 40% of agricultural soil is classed as “degraded” or “seriously degraded”. In fact, industrial farming has so damaged our soils that a third of the world’s farmland has been destroyed in the past four decades. [5]
As our soils degrade, they are losing their ability to hold carbon, releasing enormous plumes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
There is, however, a solution. Scientists and farmers around the world are pointing out that we can regenerate degraded soils by switching from intensive industrial farming to more ecological methods – not just organic fertiliser, but also no-tillage, composting, and crop rotation. Here’s the brilliant part: as the soils recover, they not only regain their capacity to hold CO2, they begin to actively pull additional CO2 out of the atmosphere.
The science on this is quite exciting. A study published recently by the US National Academy of Sciences claims that regenerative farming can sequester 3% of our global carbon emissions. [6] An article in Science suggests it could be up to 15%. [7] And new research from the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania, although not yet peer-reviewed, says sequestration rates could be as high as 40%. [8] The same report argues that if we apply regenerative techniques to the world’s pastureland as well, we could capture more than 100% of global emissions. In other words, regenerative farming may be our best shot at actually cooling the planet.
Yet despite having the evidence on their side, proponents of regenerative farming – like the international farmers’ association La Via Campesina – are fighting an uphill battle. The multinational corporations that run the industrial food system seem to be dead set against it because it threatens their monopoly power – power that relies on seeds linked to patented chemical fertilisers and pesticides. They are well aware that their methods are causing climate change, but they insist that it’s a necessary evil: if we want to feed the world’s growing population, we don’t have a choice – it’s the only way to secure high yields.
Scientists are calling their bluff. First of all, feeding the world isn’t about higher yields; it’s about fairer distribution. We already grow enough food for 10 billion people.[9] In any case, it can be argued that regenerative farming actually increases crop yields over the long term by enhancing soil fertility and improving resilience against drought and flooding. So as climate change makes farming more difficult, this may be our best bet for food security, too.
The battle here is not just between two different methods. It is between two different ways of relating to the land: one that sees the soil as an object from which profit must be extracted at all costs, and one that recognizes the interdependence of living systems and honours the principles of balance and harmony.
Ultimately, this is about more than just soil. It is about something much larger. As Pope Francis put it in his much-celebrated encyclical, our present ecological crisis is the sign of a cultural pathology. “We have come to see ourselves as the lords and masters of the Earth, entitled to plunder her at will. The sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life are symptoms that reflect the violence present in our hearts. We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the Earth; that we breathe her air and receive life from her waters.”
Maybe our engineers are missing the point. The problem with geo-engineering is that it proceeds from the very same logic that got us into this mess in the first place: one that treats the land as something to be subdued, dominated and consumed. But the solution to climate change won’t be found in the latest schemes to bend our living planet to the will of man. Perhaps instead it lies in something much more down to earth – an ethic of care and healing, starting with the soils on which our existence depends.
Of course, regenerative farming doesn’t offer a permanent solution to the climate crisis; soils can only hold a finite amount of carbon. We still need to get off fossil fuels, and – most importantly – we have to kick our obsession with endless exponential growth and downsize our material economy to bring it back in tune with ecological cycles. But it might buy us some time to get our act together.
A slightly different version of this piece appeared in The Guardian, September 10, 2016.
[1] “August 2016 Global Temperatures Set 16th Straight Monthly Record”, weather.com, Sept. 20, 2016.
[2] “Arctic sea ice crashes to record low for June”, The Guardian, July 7, 2016.
[3] “Going beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change”, London School of Economics lecture, Feb 4, 2016.
[4] Anderson, Kevin, “Avoiding dangerous climate change demands de-growth strategies from wealthier nations”, Nov. 25, 2013.
[5] “Earth has lost 1/3 of arable land in last 40 years”, The Guardian, Dec. 2, 2015.
[6] Gattinger, Andreas, et al, “Enhanced topsoil carbon stocks under organic farming”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, vol. 109 no. 44.
[7] Lal, R., “Soil Carbon Sequestration Impacts on Global Climate Change and Food Security”, Science magazine, June 11, 2004.
[8] Rodale Institute, “Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change”, April 17, 2014.
[9] Altieri, Miguel et al, “We Already Grow Enough Food for 10 Billion People … and Still Can’t End Hunger”, Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, July, 2012.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 11, 2016 | Alienation & Mental Health, Listening to the Land
by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance
Recently walking up Main Street in Park City, Utah, I saw in the Visitor’s Center doorway what looked like a man holding a great-horned owl surrounded by children. As his voice carried across the street, I heard the man explain that this owl had been found with an injured wing after being struck by a car.
I love owls. I love the haunting sound of their hoots in the darkest hours before dawn. I love the joy that accompanies the lucky sight of a splash of brown feathers against newly-fallen snow when an owl makes the rare decision to reveal herself in winter daylight. I love how owls’ mysterious nature have made them omens in so many cultures’ imaginations. So, when I saw what I thought was a great-horned owl, I automatically crossed the street with a feeling of anticipation.
Many of a great-horned owl’s characteristics were observable in the creature the man held. There were beautiful, downy brown and white feathers flecked occasionally with yellow. There was a sharp, curved beak. There were powerful wide wings – though they were tightly-clasped as this creature hugged herself for comfort.
From a distance I could see her eyes had the same shape and colors of a great-horned owl’s – big and round with an orange ring circling black. I recalled the eyes of the great-horned owls I have seen watching me from the tops of ancient juniper trees in the chilly foothills of the Great Basin. The orange in their eyes flamed and blazed. Sometimes, the black reflected impenetrable depths of wisdom. At other times, the black became a pool reflecting the silver notes of stars in the Nevada sky. And, at still other times, the black became the night soaking up the shadows before lifting with flight to disappear into clouds.
As I approached, I saw that the man’s right forearm was wrapped in leather. Two steel rings pierced the leather. Connected to the rings was a chain, about two feet long, made of still more steel rings tightly wound and welded together so the chain would never break. The chain was wrapped around and tightened to the left leg of what I had mistaken for a great-horned owl.
This was no owl. Not anymore. An owl is so much more than her eyes, beak, and talons, than the small space she occupies, than the blinking, swaying, and beak clacking she is famous for. An owl is more than the physical collection of her feathers and bones.
An owl is the rabbits, hares, mice, and voles who become her body when she eats them. An owl is the tree she sits in, the sky she descends from, and the wind she rides on. An owl is the meaning revealed in her nature. An owl is an expression of all the relationships creating her. An owl is wild. An owl is free.
Stolen from the wind, kept in a cage, and chained to a man, this creature was no longer an owl.
For a brief moment, she lifted her eyes to connect with mine. And, I was horrified by what I saw.
The orange and black in her eyes were only echoes of color. Not even the faintest trace of light remained in them. It would have been better, easier to accept if sadness or anger or even desperation was found there. But there was nothing. Nothing, but emptiness.
I knew these eyes well. These were the eyes of a creature pushed beyond pain into numbness, overwhelmed with despair, and fading into the void. These were eyes I have seen on the street. These were eyes I have seen in zoos, in aquarium tanks, and in cages. These were eyes I have seen in prison, in psyche wards, and at funerals.
I knew these eyes because I have seen them reflected in the mirrors I have peered into before trying to kill myself. I knew these eyes because I have seen them in myself.
Disturbed and overcome with sorrow, I fled in horror.
***
What is the precise nature of the horror I saw in those eyes?
First, I was witnessing the aftermath of the destruction of an owl. Captivity deprives an animal of what makes the animal an animal. Principles of deep ecology confirm this. Deep ecology is the recognition that life is an ongoing process sustained by healthy connections between living beings. Through this recognition, deep ecology teaches that each living being is best understood as a specific collection of connections with other living beings.
A captive animal is no longer an animal when humans physically cut off the animal’s connections. Neil Evernden, a foundational deep ecologist, describes how this happens to a gorilla kept in a zoo in his brilliant work, The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment. Evernden writes: “[An animal] is an interaction of genetic potential with environment and with conspecifics. A solitary gorilla in a zoo is not really a gorilla; it is a gorilla-shaped imitation of a social being which can only develop fully in a society of kindred beings.”
Evernden goes on to undermine one justification for keeping animals in zoos (preserving their genetic legacy) and in the process explains further why a gorilla in a zoo is not really a gorilla. He writes, “To attempt to preserve only a package of genes is to accept a very restricted definition of animality and to fall into the trap of mistaking the skin-encapsulated object for the process of relationships that constitutes the creature in question.”
In other words, an animal is not an object. An animal is an ongoing process of relationships. To destroy these relationships by restricting an animal’s physical ability to engage in the relationships that sustains the animal, you destroy the animal. When I saw the creature on the chain, I recognized how the driver who struck her and the man who chained her isolated her from the specific relationships that sustain owls. She had been reduced to the “skin-encapsulated object” Evernden describes.
It was impossible to see the creature on the chain and not think of all the creatures on chains, in theme park pools, and in zoo cages. I thought, specifically, of the way a growing amount of media attention is being given to the captivity destroying individuals of two species sharing many similarities with humans: orca whales and elephants.
Orcas are family-oriented and relatively long-lived. They speak a complex language and pass down traditional knowledge such as hunting techniques from generation to generation. These characteristics coupled with the history orcas have of protecting humans from sharks creates a special bond with them in the minds of many humans.
Dr. Naomi A. Rose, in her study “Killer Controversy: Why Orcas Should No Longer Be Kept in Captivity,” states the obvious, “Orcas are inherently unsuited to confinement.” To support this claim, Dr. Rose explains that orcas have significantly lower annual survival rates in captivity than in the wild. In fact, the annual mortality rate for orcas is more than two and a half times higher in captivity than in the wild.
Dr. Rose demonstrates how captivity attacks the bodies of orcas explaining that one of the most common causes of death in captive orcas is infection. Infection-caused mortality is linked to immunosuppression and, as Dr. Rose describes, pathogens that the immune systems of wild orcas would successfully manage become fatal to captive orcas due to chronic stress, psychological depression, and even boredom. So not only does captivity act on an orca’s mental health it attacks an orca’s physical health through the mental disorders it causes.
Elephants provide another example. Elephants, like orcas and humans, live in large, extended families, they develop complex social relationships, and they require large spaces to serve as their home ranges. With a similar declaration to the one Dr. Rose made about orcas, Ed Stewart – president of the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) that operates three wildlife sanctuaries in Northern California – explains the situation for captive elephants in a piece for National Geographic, “No Ethical Way to Keep Elephants in Captivity.”
To demonstrate why there is no ethical way to keep elephants in captivity, Stewart describes what captivity does to elephants: “The inadequacies for elephants in captivity will always be a source of disease and suffering for elephants. Cramped enclosures and hard surfaces cause a variety of problems, including deadly foot disease and arthritis, infertility, obesity, and abnormal repetitive behaviors such as swaying and head bobbing.” These “abnormal repetitive behaviors” are of, course, psychological disorders.
***
With my history of mental illness, when I learn about the psychological effects captivity has on orcas and elephants I wonder if there are connections between human mental health and other animals’ mental health.
Of course, there are. Just like psychological disorders open the way for other health problems in animals like orcas and elephants, mental illnesses like depression dramatically increase a human’s risk for other illnesses. Psychiatrist Dr. Peter Kramer notes in his book Against Depression that humans suffering from depression are four times as likely as those without to die from cardiac disease, five times as likely to die of coronary artery disease, and four times as likely to die from angina, coronary artery bypass surgery, and congestive heart failure. As a poet with major depression, the power of the metaphor created by the way depression literally attacks the heart is not lost on me.
I am certainly not the first person to investigate these connections. Since about 1980, westerners investigating these connections have called themselves “ecopsychologists.” Meanwhile, traditional peoples have worked to understand these connections since time immemorial.
Theodore Roszak, in his essay “Where Psyche Meet Gaia” written for the anthology Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, explains the history of ecopsychology. It is not new. He writes, “…in fact [ecopsychology’s] sources are old enough to be called aboriginal. Once upon a time all psychology was ‘ecopsychology.’ No special word was needed. The oldest healers in the world…knew no other way to heal than to work within the context of environmental reciprocity.”
While it appears that the incidence of mental illness in traditional societies is drastically lower than in civilized societies, perhaps we would do well to “work within the context of environmental reciprocity” as the oldest healers in the world have always done. Viewing human mental health through the lens of deep ecology is one way to do this.
The late Paul Shepard’s 1982 book Nature and Madness is a foundational text in ecopsychology. Shepard wrote the book to answer the simple question, “Why do men persist in destroying their habitat?” His answer is psychopathology. Or, in his words, “a kind of failure in some fundamental dimension of human existence, an irrationality beyond mistakenness, a kind of madness.”
How did some humans develop this madness? Shepard calls on a concept from biology – ontogeny – to explain the madness. Ontogeny is the development of an individual organism from the earliest stage to maturity. Shepard makes the simple, but brilliant observation, that to understand human behavior we must understand human development.
Ontogeny is most often studied as it pertains to animals, but Shepard is quick to note, “Anyone who thinks the human creature is not a specialized animal should spend a few hours with the thirty odd volumes of the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child or the issues of the Journal of Child Development.” Ontogeny, then, is as appropriate in the study of humans as it is in other animals.
Shepard goes on to explain that the ontogeny of traditional peoples “who seem to live at peace with their world” is healthier than that of civilized peoples. Shepard writes: “Their way of life is the one to which our ontogeny has been fitted by natural selection, fostering cooperation, leadership, a calendar of mental growth, and the study of a mysterious and beautiful world where the clues to the meaning of life were embodied in natural things, where everyday life was inextricable from spiritual significance and encounter, and where the members of the group celebrated individual stages and passages as ritual participation…”
So, humans require certain things to mature from children to adults. Human children need to be immersed in the natural world where they can interact with non-human others that will reveal to them the meaning of life. They also need intact communities with elders who understand the passages of human life to help the young celebrate through rituals. And, ultimately to become elders themselves. I am reminded, again, of Evernden’s statement that an animal is “a social being which can only develop fully in a society of kindred beings.”
Spend any time with children outdoors and you will see them find deep meaning in natural things. This is healthy human development. Shepard explains, “Animals have a magnetic affinity for the child, for each in its way seems to embody some impulse, reaction, or movement that is ‘like me.’ In the playful, controlled enactment of them comes a gradual mastery of the personal inner zoology of fears, joys, and relationships. In stories told, their forms spring to life in the mind, represented in consciousness, training the capacity to imagine.” This “gradual mastery of the personal inner zoology of fears, joys, and relationships” is essential to a human’s full development.
Shepard goes on, “The play space – trees, shrubs, paths, hidings, climbings – is a visible structured entity, another prototype of relationships that hold.” Forming relationships with trees and shrubs, then, is another essential element of human development.
***
My four-year old neice, Layla, and my nephew, her one-year old brother, Thomas, teach me that the ecopsychologists are right:
Photo by Will Falk
Beneath a cloudless mountain sky in late autumn, Layla kneels on a wooden bridge above a clear pool collecting where a beaver dam slows the cold Snake Creek in Midway, Utah. Mesmerized, her face is drawn slowly downward until a blonde strand escapes from the mess of hair made tangly by an afternoon of play to brush the pool’s face. Barely aware of her own motion, she brushes the wet strand back into place behind her ear. The icy drops that run down the back of her neck and disappear behind her jacket collar do not break her concentration.
I am so fascinated by her behavior that I almost let Thomas jump from my arms to join his sister on the bridge’s edge. Thomas is fascinated, too. I lower him down and let him find his balance with his new walking muscles as his little hand tightens around my right pinky and ring fingers.
We approach Layla as fast as Thomas’ legs will allow. “What are you doing, Layla?” I ask.
She still has trouble pronouncing the short ‘I’ in my name and says, matter-of-factly with a touch of annoyance that I cannot see the obvious, “Playing with the fish, Weel.”
She does not move her gaze from the water and when I get close enough I see what she is watching. There is a small, four inch, rainbow trout, facing upstream gazing right back at Layla. The wide beautiful blue in Layla’s eyes join with the sharp obsidian black in the trout’s eyes. From under a brown stone on the creek bed, a much bigger trout, fourteen inches or so, circles around the smaller one – as clearly curious as I am. The small trout, like my small niece, pays no attention to the approaching adult.
And then I understand what Layla means by “playing.” When Layla leans to her left, the trout whips her tail and swims to the right. When Layla leans to her right, the trout whips her tail and swims to the left. Layla is, obviously, playing with the fish.
Later that night, Layla is taking a bath. Layla’s mother is at the health clinic where she works as a physician assistant. Layla’s father is busy feeding Thomas and he asks me to check on Layla. When I walk into the bathroom, she quickly ducks under water and splashes around. Eventually, she must come up for air and I make the mistake again.
“What are you doing, Layla?” I ask.
Again, she is annoyed. “I’m not Layla, Weel,” she explains. “I’m a fish.” And, she ducks under water once more. I laugh and shake my head. Who am I to disagree?
***
Finally, I understand the precise nature of the horror I felt looking into that chained creature’s eyes: I saw myself, and so many like me, reflected in her eyes.
Just like an owl on a chain is no longer an owl, an orca in a theme park pool is no longer an orca, and an elephant in a cage at a zoo is no longer an elephant, humans cut off from the natural world are no longer human. We are animals and animals are an ongoing process of relationships. When those relationships become impossible, we lose ourselves.
I do not believe I go too far when I write, “We are no longer human.” By “we” I mean civilized humans who live much like I do.
I exist without most of the relationships that have made humans human throughout our history. I woke up this morning in a bed two-stories above an asphalt floor. I do not know how much asphalt I would need to dig through to reach soil. When I opened my eyes, before the sunrise, I did not see the dark, eternally mysterious forms of clouds traveling across sky. I did not see the pale courage of morning stars holding on to the coldest hours before dawn. I saw a ceiling made from the flesh of once-living, once-wild trees.
When I rolled out of bed, I did not pause at the edge formed by the warmth inside my home meeting the chill of a December mountain morning to enjoy the original pleasure in sensory diversity. I cursed because I let the heat in our apartment dip below 62 degrees Fahrenheit. I did not walk down to a river bank to draw my day’s water. I did not stop to watch the burning glow of the rising sun spread across the river’s face. I stumbled into the shower where I pulled a plastic handle and water stolen from rivers held captive behind dams was heated by the remains of ancient forests ripped from their resting place deep beneath the earth.
And, this was only the first five minutes of a day I have repeated over and over again in 30 years of life. If Shepard is correct, and a stunted ontogeny produces stunted humans, then I, and so many humans like me, are stunted. This does not make me sad, it makes me angry. And that anger feels like an animal reaction to an insane world. I know, as well, it is not too late for Layla or Thomas. It is not too late for their children and their children’s children. In many ways, Layla was right. She is a fish. She is a puppy. She is an eagle. She is all the relationships I have seen her form with the creatures she imitates. And, to protect her, we must protect them.
For further exploration of human control and imprisonment of animals, read Derrick Jensen’s Thought To Exist In the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos
To repost this or other DGR original writings, please contact newsservice@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 18, 2016 | Alienation & Mental Health, Listening to the Land
by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance
This first appeared on Jason Howell’s Howlarium. Special thanks to Jason for his graphics.
From Jason: “Where it’s not uncommon for contemporary writers to root their work in mining—lived experience, the depth of the canon, the cultural moment, whatever—Will Falk, poet, lawyer, and environmental activist from Park City, Utah, makes the whole of his work about listening to the natural world. The effect, in this reader’s opinion, is a kind of anthropocentric-for-biocentric blood transfusion.
“I asked Will to describe what it took for him to get enough media and concrete out of the way so as to hear from the biosphere loud-and-clearly. As fate would have it, he and his partner were gearing up for a camping trip in southern Utah, so he’d have some space to think about it. Here’s what he came back with.”
Survival compels me.
My own survival, the survival of those I love, and the survival of the biosphere compel me. Listening to the land saves my life.
An old, gray seagull flying wobbly through thick, wet snow to speak to me from the concrete ledge of a window I watched Lake Michigan from while I recovered from a suicide attempt in St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee, WI saved my life. A pregnant mother moose, who shared our single-track 17-mile snowmobile trail at the Unist’ot’en Camp turned to stare me in the eye giving me a glimpse into the wisdom of the wild, saved my life. The wind whispering questions through aspen leaves in Park City, Utah pulled me from my depressed mind a few weeks ago and, again, saved my life.
The compulsion will last as long as my survival. My survival will last as long as the compulsion. I suffer from major depressive disorder and general anxiety disorder caused by the same forces producing total ecological collapse. I must listen to the biosphere to resist depression and humans must listen to the biosphere to stop the destruction of Life.
A novice attorney, I wanted to die. I was so tired.
Before I was a writer, I was a public defender in Kenosha, WI doing my best to push back against a criminal justice system intent on perpetuating institutional racism. I spent all my time rotating between the wooden walls of the courthouse, the glass walls of the office, and the steel walls of the jail.
A novice attorney, I was determined not to let my inexperience affect my clients, but I made mistakes. The only solution I could come up with involved working more urgently and working longer hours. I woke up at 3AM to review my case files. I worked Saturdays and Sundays. I walked back to my beat Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot of the Kenosha County Jail after telling another client there wasn’t much I could do for her, and broke down sobbing with my forehead against the steering wheel in broad daylight. I became exhausted. I made more mistakes.
One night, I came home from dinner and took all the Ambien sleeping pills I had just been prescribed that morning. I wanted to die. I was so tired.
I was also living a life completely mediated by humans. This mediation was total. Physically, my life happened almost completely within atmospheres created by humans: the office, the jail, the courthouse, my apartment building. Spiritually, I had forsaken the Catholicism I was raised in, but instead of recognizing the sacred in every living being around me, my development into a mature member of a natural community stalled in an adolescent insistence that life had no meaning outside the meaning humans could create.
This insistence imprisoned me psychologically as surely as the jail physically imprisoned my clients. I became Sisyphus pushing my boulder up the hill, blind to the countless non-human others producing my life and cut off from natural allies in the biosphere.
As the pills entered my bloodstream and I settled into what I thought was my deathbed, time froze on my consciousness. I’m not sure I believe in a spiritual afterlife, but this last moment before I passed out was a functional eternity. I was confronted with the totality of my life and I realized that if I died this night, I would have failed my role. And, if the pain that was branded onto my mind with my recognition that I could give so much more to Life was the last experience frozen on my consciousness forever, then hell is very real, indeed.
A heavy snow began to fall.
After this suicide attempt, I spent a week in the psyche ward of St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee. The St. Francis psyche ward was on the seventh floor of an eight-floor building. For exercise, and because there was nothing else to do, I braved the fluorescent lights outside my room and paced the long hallway that made up most of the seventh floor.
At each end of the hallway were wide windows. One looked west into the rows of old company housing for the Milwaukee Iron Company. The other looked east over the waters of Lake Michigan. Patients are not allowed off the seventh floor and there were rusty iron bars outside the glass just in case we were tempted to take that route to fresh air. I tried to open a window facing Lake Michigan anyway. It would not open. A heavy snow began to fall surrounding the hospital in more white. I pressed my forehead against the cold glass pane. The cold felt good.
It was not long before I saw an old spotted seagull awkwardly wheeling and diving through the falling snow. I was mesmerized by the odd gracefulness in his seemingly drunken turns through the snow. His circles brought him closer and closer to my window. I wondered why he was flying through such treacherous conditions. He was, of course, the only bird in the sky. As he flew closer, I was stricken with the beauty of his grayness against the white.
Gray. Color. A contrast to the blankness. I began to believe the drunk old gull was braving the snowstorm to speak to me. He passed a few feet from my window, dipped a wing, and wobbled back toward Lake Michigan. A few moments later he was back. He squeezed through iron bars over my window, faced me, made eye contact, and flew away.
The waves on the lake rippled gray, too. The heavy snow fell slowly, gingerly over the waters. The waves hesitated, hanging a moment in the air, before being swallowed by the lake. White became gray. I drank up the color for hours following one gray wave after another from their birthplace on the horizon until they washed not far below me onto the shore.
I was compelled to write this down. I’ve been watching and listening ever since.
Writing only for myself is masturbatory.
Depression is a chronic illness. Doctors know now that our biological stress response is largely responsible for depression. A body experiencing too much stress, for too long can overproduce stress response hormones. If these hormones are present for a long enough time they literally damage the brain. Depression results from this brain damage. The dominant culture (which I call “civilization”), based on ecological drawdown and enforced scarcity, creates profoundly stressful lives for its members.
Depression bends my mind over itself and makes listening a constant struggle. A classic depression symptom is social withdrawal and isolation. The brain reacts to depression in a similar way to other illnesses. When you get the flu, your body tells you to isolate. The same instinct is triggered with depression.
With the flu, the instinct is adaptive and good for the way it prevents contagion. But with depression the instinct can prove deadly. Isolation leads to rumination and rumination perpetuates the release of the very stress hormones that damage the brain and produce depression. In this way, withdrawal creates a vicious cycle and the cycle must be interrupted. Personally, I experience suicidal ideation too frequently making interruption of this cycle imperative for my personal survival.
Doctors strenuously encourage depressed patients to socialize even when every instinct tells them not to. Spending time with loved ones releases hormones that counteract stress hormones. Socializing also occupies the depressed mind so it cannot ruminate. When doctors insist that their patients spend time with loved ones, however, most people understand this to mean exclusively human loved ones.
That ancient seagull opened me to the vast possibilities for relationship in the natural world. The impulse to write about my experience with the seagull pulled me out of my depressed mind and gave me something to ponder beyond my own pain. I do not typically understand what non-humans are saying right away. Pinyon pine trees do not have tongues, the wind is too vast and too busy for words, and great blue herons do not speak English.
So, I have to ponder the experience. Life speaks in patterns, gestures, and themes that must be teased out. We understand through story and it is no wonder that we discover Life’s meaning in the act of telling stories. I feel that writing only for myself is masturbatory. It might feel good, but it doesn’t help anyone but me. Writing with the desire to share my experience publicly forces me to order my experience in such a way that it makes sense to other humans. In this way, writing becomes social on multiple levels. I listen to non-humans and then I begin public conversations with humans about what I think I’ve heard.
Listening to the biosphere goes well beyond my own survival.
The dominant culture exhibits many of the classic symptoms of depression as well. This culture has isolated itself from the biosphere and is suicidal—stepping ever closer to the brink of total ecological collapse.
This collapse, this suicidality, is produced, in part, by the dominant culture’s belief that humans are the only beings capable of speaking, the only beings worth listening to, the only beings capable of relating with. My friend, the brilliant environmental writer, Derrick Jensen, has given us a name for this phenomenon. He calls it “human supremacy,” and the myth of human supremacy is a foundational story the dominant culture is built upon.
Human supremacy is propagated by the dominant culture because it derives its power from ecological destruction. Before you can destroy non-human others you must silence them. Deep ecologist Neil Evernden has pointed out that the first thing scientists do in vivisection labs is cut the vocal cords of the animals they are going to operate on. The dominant culture cuts the vocal cords of non-humans, of people of color, of women, of anyone it wants to dominate.
I ignored non-human voices for too long and I almost destroyed myself as a result. The dominant culture ignores and actively suppresses non-human voices and is destroying Life as a result. I am not naive enough to believe that writing alone will stop the murder of the biosphere, but writing helps me understand non-human voices, helps me resist the seductions of depression in the process, and is a tool to remind humans of their heritage. I always seek to contribute my writing to serious, organized resistance. I believe my role in this resistance is to combat human supremacy through reminding my readers of the countless, beautiful voices—human and non-human—to listen to in the biosphere.
I am in love with aspen trees, with pinyon-juniper forests, with my one-year old nephew, with my four-year old niece, with their aunt (my amazing partner), with a rainbow trout that tickled my feet in a pool I soaked them in after a 50 mile hike in the Sierras a few summers ago, with that seagull that woke me up to it all. I am in love, so I listen, and when I listen I hear murmurs of fear about ever-growing threats. When you’re in love, you act to protect your beloved. We cannot fail to stop the dominant culture, because if we fail every voice will be silenced forever.
To repost this or other DGR original writings, please contact newsservice@deepgreenresistance.org
by DGR News Service | Mar 15, 2016 | Listening to the Land
Featured Image: Abandoned mill near Sorrento, Italy, by Jason Wallace
Derrick Jensen / Deep Green Resistance
In the time after, the buffalo come home. At first only a few, shaking snow off their shoulders as they pass from mountain to plain. Big bulls sweep away snowpack from the soft grass beneath; big cows attend to and protect their young. The young themselves delight, like the young everywhere, in the newness of everything they see, smell, taste, touch, and feel.
Wolves follow the buffalo, as do mallards, gadwalls, blue-winged teal, northern shovelers, northern pintails, redheads, canvasbacks, and tundra swans. Prairie dogs come home, bringing with them the rain, and bringing with them ferrets, foxes, hawks, eagles, snakes, and badgers. With all of these come meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds. With all of these come the tall and short grasses. With these come the prairies.
In the time after, the salmon come home, swimming over broken dams to forests who have never forgotten the feeling of millions of fish turning their rivers black and roiling, filling the rivers so full that sunlight does not reach the bottom of even shallow streams. In the time after, the forests remember a feeling they’ve never forgotten, of embracing these fish that are as much a part of these forests as are cedars and spruce and bobcats and bears.
In the time after, the beavers come home, bringing with them caddisflies and dragonflies, bringing with them ponds and pools and wetlands, bringing home frogs, newts, and fish. Beavers build and build, and restore and restore, working hard to unmake the damage that was done, and to remake forests and rivers and streams and marshes into who they once were, into who they need to be, into who they will be again..
In the time after, plants save the world.
In the time after, the oceans are filled with fish, with forests of kelp and communities of coral. In the time after, the air is full with the steamy breath of whales, and the shores are laden with the hard shells and patient, ageless eyes of sea turtles. Seals haul out on sea ice, and polar bears hunt them.
In the time after, buffalo bring back prairies by being buffalo, and prairies bring back buffalo by being prairies. Salmon bring back forests by being salmon, and forests bring back salmon by being forests. Cell by cell, leaf by leaf, limb by limb, prairie and forest and marsh and ocean; they bring the carbon home, burying it in the ground, holding it in their bodies. They do what they have done before and what they will do again.
The time after is a time of magic. Not the magic of parlor tricks, not the magic of smoke and mirrors, distractions that point one’s attention away from the real action. No, this magic is the real action. This magic is the embodied intelligence of the world and its members. This magic is the rough skin of sharks without which they would not swim so fast, so powerfully. This magic is the long tongues of butterflies and the flowers who welcome them. This magic is the brilliance of fruits and berries who grow to be eaten by those who then distribute their seeds along with the nutrients necessary for new growth. This magic is the work of fungi who join trees and mammals and bacteria to create a forest. This magic is the billions of beings in a handful of soil. This magic is the billions of beings who live inside you, who make it possible for you to live.
In the time before, the world was resilient, beautiful, and strong. It happened through the magic of blood flowing through capillaries, and the magic of tiny seeds turning into giant redwoods, and the magic of long relationships between rivers and mountains, and the magic of complex dances between all members of natural communities. It took life and death, and the gifts of the dead, forfeited to the living, to make the world strong.
In the time after, this is understood.
In the time after, there is sorrow for those who did not make it: passenger pigeons, great auks, dodos, striped rocksnails, Charles Island tortoises, Steller’s sea cows, Darling Downs hopping mice, Guam flying foxes, Saudi gazelle, sea mink, Caspian tigers, quaggas, laughing owls, St. Helena olives, Cape Verde giant skinks, silver trout, Galapagos amaranths.
But in those humans and non-humans who survive, there is another feeling, emerging from below and beyond and around and through this sorrow. In the time after, those still alive begin to feel something almost none have felt before, something that everyone felt long, long ago. What those who come in the time after feel is a sense of realistic optimism, a sense that things will turn out all right, a sense that life, which so desperately wants to continue, will endure, will thrive.
We, living now, in the time before, have choices. We can remember what it is to be animals on this planet and remember and understand what it is to live and die such that our lives and deaths help make the world stronger. We can live and die such that we make possible a time after where life flourishes, where buffalo can come home, and the same for salmon and prairie dogs and prairies and forests and carbon and rivers and mountains.
Originally published in the Spring 2016 issue of YES! Magazine.
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Dec 24, 2015 | Listening to the Land, Lobbying
By Stephany Seay / Buffalo Field Campaign
Featured image: Hundreds of wild buffalo will no longer be harassed or otherwise harmed on the Horse Butte peninsula, seen in the distance here. Photo by Buffalo Field Campaign.
Yesterday, Montana Governor Steve Bullock issued his final decision on year-round habitat for wild bison in Montana, and Buffalo Field Campaign is very pleased to announce that after more than eighteen years of fighting for wild buffalo to freely roam Horse Butte, we have finally achieved this significant victory! As many of you know, Horse Butte is part of what we have been pressing for since the beginning of our campaign, and we are inclined to celebrate this achievement as the victory that it is; indeed, it may be the biggest victory we have had! It took nearly two decades of hard work in the field, in the courts, and in the policy arena to accomplish this, and it demonstrates how perseverance pays off, and how we must never give up.
This victory is a result of endless pressure, being endlessly applied by BFC, by you our dedicated supporters, by the incredible and active residents of Horse Butte, and by the buffalo themselves who consistently demonstrate resistance, persistence, and endurance. Another boon granted the buffalo is that bull bison — but only bulls — will be given year-round habitat in the Gardiner Basin. Please take a little time to celebrate this victory, as it has been hard-earned by each of you. Thank you to everyone who has been with us for the buffalo, making our work possible.
As we bask in this triumph, we cannot let down our guard. We must strengthen our resolve to continue fighting for wild buffalo and their right to roam the lands that are their birthright. We have many difficult battles yet to win. A closer look at Governor Bullock’s decision shows us that the buffalo are still in grave danger from livestock industry interests and the government agencies that serve them.
In 2004, the courageous and passionate Akiva Silver occupied the Horse Butte bison trap, saving many buffalo from being captured and shipped to slaughter. In 2008, the trap was again occupied by another brave individual, and the Montana Department of Livestock have not set it up since, nor will they ever again. Buffalo Field Campaign photo by Chris Rota.
Even the decision to grant buffalo year-round habitat on Horse Butte has its devilish details, mainly in the form of a population cap: during fall and winter approximately 450 buffalo will be allowed to live there; during the spring that number rises to 600, which is terrific timing since that’s when the large herds come to Horse Butte for calving season; but by July the government will allow only 250 buffalo to remain. From reviewing the Governor’s decision, it appears that, should there be more than 250 buffalo on Horse Butte by summer, hazing would not begin until then, which is about six weeks later than hazing has been taking place in recent years. While our ultimate goal is to put an end to all hazing, this means that wild buffalo will finally have the opportunity to make their own choices about when or whether to migrate into Yellowstone for the summer months. It will be an awesome gift to learn what they will do directly from the buffalo.
The deeper you look into the Governor’s decision, the more questions it raises. Hazing, hunting, and capture-for-slaughter remain tools that the livestock-backed government agencies will employ, with goals of keeping this highly vulnerable — and indeed, endangered — population at artifically low numbers. Additionally, wild buffalo will not be granted any “tolerance” along the south side of the Madison River, which is favored habitat, mostly public lands, that the matriarch-led family groups very much enjoy and require during the months surrounding calving season. Also, in the Gardiner Basin, matriarch-led family groups will not have full access like their adult male counterparts, but will be given tolerance only during “hunting” season, and will be hazed into Yellowstone by mid-spring.
Again, we have a long way to go for the buffalo. We need you to join with us in strengthening your resolve and renewing your commitment to do whatever it takes to defend our beloved wild buffalo until they roam free all across the lands that have been their home since buffalo time began.
Support Buffalo Field Campaign here.
