Writing by Camila Thorndike
Epiphany 2: Conservation: the Politics of Sharing
Other Writing:
» Illusion
» Nostalgia Lives With Me
» Vanishing Point
» Waves Rocket Sound
» Wind
Epiphany 1: Learning to Walk Uneven Ground
In a place, a pacific place of crashing waves and a Santa Claus Claus called “El Viejo Pascuero” who bring balloons to the beach and where fish fly from sea to steaming platter, in that curve round the ocean named Zapallar, was my first earthquake. It was in the old house on the hill, and it was older then because everything is when you’re small. To awaken to a shaking, shocked world and see the darkness electrify with uncertainty is something I’d rather forget, tiny and trapped in mosquito netting, deafened by the earth-deep arthritic creaks of towering wood walls. My mother’s reassurance that the edifice had withstood countless “temblores” before this one and my father’s sleepy mutterings settled my heart and I slept. But truly, this is a stunned fear speakable only for its passing brevity.
Double that lifetime and the shaking of the world again paralyzed me in darkness. Rather than jolting me out of slumber to a momentarily crashing night, this terror cracked open the realization of an unstable world whose tremors would only build in magnitude. Crumbling ice caps. Species disappearing before they have names. A changing, unpredictable climate.
The persistent floods and fires of my night terrors manifested themselves day by day less cryptically than skeptics hoped. And I broiled in bitter disbelief and self-righteous rage that business as usual didn’t immediately about-face and traffic jam the ticker-tape of progress, still coal-fired. Like mythic Cassandra, I was obsessed and lonely with prophetic worry that naturally, no one wished to hear.
And so my mind raced, and fear fed the fire of my youth to consider the most extreme of implications. In the face of the ticking clock of science (trustworthy or otherwise) it occurred to me that the right and ability to bring forth life is both a privilege and an irresponsibility. I know well that women faced with imminent or supposed crises have long considered this conundrum. And I know that I have a decade to consider. But look what we’ve done in a decade.
Doesn’t this core-deep fear that I still can’t shake and shakes me paralyzed demand respect, require an answer? If overpopulation is the root cause of all extreme enviro-degradation, then perhaps the greatest good I can do for the world is to not birth yet another reproductive and consumptive person. And in the face of an uncertain future, perhaps the greatest good I can do for my children is not to have them.
But if anything’s been glaringly obvious these weeks of confusion and breathlessness it’s the nearly clichéd complexity of all that is. And in that complexity I find relief from this exhausting chatter of black and white questions as dead-ending as the night terrors of years past. This exhaustion stems from a propensity to bump against philosophic questions of such enormous consequence that one is both macrocosmically giant and microcosmically meaningless.
People who confront conundrums such as these through action, scientists like Susan Fouty and Mary O’Brian, are those industrious beacons who offer guidance out of this spiraling descent of Big Questions. They show us that one’s ultimate responsibility is to increase the uncertainty that doomsday forecasts prove true. The physical results of their work inspire me with evidence that if we act, ecosystems can recover within the span of a human life – which may just fit within the IPCC timescale. We’ve met activists like Mike Prather of the Owens Valley Committee, and Nils Christopherson of Wallowa Resources, who are living – and most importantly – smiling examples that while sweeping optimism (like negativity) is absurd and useless, a daily practice of honest hope is pragmatic. And imperative. And tangible.
I don’t know if I’ll have children, and I will restrain my disappointment if you want ten. I will, however, confront taboo to have this uncomfortable conversation. For I had an entire childhood to practice balancing on solid ground before a “temblor” hit me. The next generation might not have that time. Now, I access balance through action, and in this world that’s changing so quickly, action may be the inner ear and saving grace of our species. Still, I wonder how to explain this coming but yet unpredictable man-made earthquake to a child. Reassurances in the night may no longer suffice.
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Epiphany 2: Conservation: the Politics of Sharing
At a cracked and trampled crime scene of cattle v. desert life, Jon Marvel of Western Watersheds Project bitterly remarks that ranchers must have missed the kindergarten lesson on sharing. Sharing and compromise are at the heart of the qualifying “public” aspect of vast tracts of government lands in the American West. As citizens and taxpayers, we all have reason to be invested and concerned for the well-being – financial and ecological – of these poorly-known yet invaluable areas. A key insight to understanding the devastation wrought on these lands is the historical philosophy behind the landscape of conservation through sustained multiple-use.
Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the US Forest Service and a leader of the conservationist movement at the turn of the century, intended conservation policy to provide “the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time.” The preservationist tradition of John Muir and Henry Thoreau is the historical nature philosophy from which the Jon Marvels of the world emerge. Since conservationists believed that people should be able to benefit economically from public lands through long-term sustainable resource extraction, it is no wonder that the fine line between exploitation and sustained yield continues to prove an uncomfortable definition for the American West.
In the face of illogical economics and irreconcilable ecological realities on the arid Western cattle allotment, one must call into question the validity of ranchers’ self-titling as “range conservationists.” On the one hand, these public grass and forestlands have provided “great good” to people for a “long time.” However, 150 years of ranching is but a moment in the 10,000-year human history of these ecosystems. And only 20,000 permittees profit from these lands. Thus, Pinchot’s desire that public lands be used for the greatest good and benefit the greatest number is most certainly not met in the meat production industry that dominates our shared landscape.
Granted, there are many uses on public lands that do not benefit everyone, and sharing is not easy. We have all experienced this: a messy camper ruins your wilderness experience, ATV tracks tear up a delicate sand dune slope, highway pollution gives your child asthma and oil extraction eventually leads to global warming. The case of public lands grazing is the paradox of a particularly nasty yet invisible case of environmental degradation for the benefit of a few.
There are obvious injustices in a system in which private businesspeople are overwhelmingly supported by taxpayer dollars and acreage to run an industry of greater historical and cultural value than tangible public benefit. As rancher-supporters have insisted, “the cows are here” – whether they are here to stay is another matter, but the system exists, and it exists because it is politically supported. Sensible ideas, scientific evidence, and economic truths only go so far. Ultimately, everything comes down to politics, because our worldview and the way we manage it is based on values.
So what do we value? Our current methods of resource use on public lands, of which grazing is only one example, are far too extractive to provide the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time. What is at stake – namely, healthy riparian zones and watersheds, native species persistence, and functioning, resilient ecosystem services as a whole – is compromised by too many cows on the land for too long. Additionally, our agricultural system is of such scale and scope that communal care for the land is rare and unappreciated. A purely preservationist management approach for future generations may not be socially acceptable, and thus prove unsustainable in the long run and socially damaging in the short. However, settlers of the West have prospered through great changes over the past couple centuries, and changing the status quo to regain balance is not an unreasonable goal. Merely setting a goal is the first, invaluable step.
Rancher Sam Boies stated matter-of-factly that if the American people decide that they don’t want cows on the public lands, then so be it. It means a lot for a fourth-generation Nevadan rancher from an environmentally conscientious family to say this. The impediment to this decision is that the American people as a whole don’t even know that the public lands exist, let alone that they have more rights to it than cows do. Western public lands were dedicated for multiple use with a long-term vision to simultaneously and perpetually provide for all values. We need to discover our contemporary shared value, so let the conversation begin.
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