Acting Like a Mountain by Will Stolzenburg

I add my apologies for the electronic gremlins who made off with several rich and thoughtful comments from yesterday’s discussion. And my thanks to the intrepid WildRead team who so gallantly rescued them from the ether.

I also want to introduce next week’s moderator, Anne Post, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Conservation Librarian. Anne and the WILD READ team will be your guide as we take what may seem an epic leap of subject—on levels of taxonomy, geomorphology, and philosophy—as we go from the wolf of Aldo Leopold’s Thinking Like a Mountain, to the Anthill of E.O. Wilson. But of course there’s a common heart to these stories, as Anne and the rest of you will no doubt discuss.

But for the last post on Thinking Like a Mountain, I’d like to raise a prickly issue that comes from that cynical and skeptical chamber of my journalist heart. We’ve talked about philosophy and ethics and thinking like a mountain. But how many of us really live like a mountain? Do we gravitate to Leopold’s poetic vision of compassion and community as a nice, soothing ideal, but as an impractical way of life in the crowded, dog-eat-dog world we’ve inherited? And what about the convictions of Leopold himself?

I’m speaking here of a point Curt Meine brought up a week ago in his opening post on this blog, about discovering the date that Leopold actually shot the now legendary heroine of Thinking Like a Mountain. It’s an important question, because until recently, none of us—not even Curt, who wrote the book on Leopold—could be sure the shooting actually happened. I first spoke with Curt about that incident when I was writing my book, which examined the consequences for life on earth from losing our great predators. An essay written in 2005 by a biologist from Berkeley named Dale McCullough—which unfortunately may never have been published—raised the question of whether Leopold did indeed shoot the iconic wolf in that canyon on that fateful day. The records were missing. Leopold, the consummate journaler, apparently hadn’t recorded it anywhere that scholars like Curt Meine could detect—until recently. Curt emailed shortly after my book came out—my published position on the matter sitting squarely and cowardly on the fence–that he had found Leopold’s smoking gun. “Just recently some new Leopold family letters surfaced,” wrote Curt. “One of them contains the first extant documentary evidence of the wolf-killing incident.”

So it turns out Leopold did shoot the wolf, in 1909. As a journalist and admirer of Leopold’s thinking and writing, I’ll admit I was relieved to hear that one of the conservation movement’s most iconic martyrs had not been manufactured for the sake of good story. But there remains that unfortunate gap, those years between the shooting and Leopold’s actual change of heart. As McCullough so baldly stated: “Leopold's conversion about the inherent value of predators didn't come until the middle of the 1930s, some 20 years later.” And as we all know, Thinking Like a Mountain was written in 1944. Leopold’s legendary line, as he peers into the fading green fire of the wolf’s dying eyes—“I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain"—is, to be charitable, a bit of a stretch.

So I wonder, do we grant Leopold his poetic license, ignore the messier details, and accept the larger lesson of Thinking Like a Mountain as a sincere and achievable goal in our ethical evolution? Or do we chalk it up as one more piece of hypocrisy that helps explain why we’re losing the campaign for wildness in this world?

No Lions in My Back Yard by Will Stolzenburg

For the record, I’m stealing this title from an essay written a few years back by ecologists Josh Donlan and Harry Greene, who were prompted to respond to the blizzard of hate mail they received after spearheading a proposal to bring some of America’s missing beasts back to the country’s wildest, unpeopled spaces. Donlan and Greene were widely excoriated for their “rewilding” proposal, which many wrongly interpreted as a capricious plot to dump truckloads of lions and elephants in the suburbs of Topeka. In the spirit of that rousing episode of conservation history, I’d like to continue in the vein of my first post, wondering what constitutes nature in 21^st century America. And what Leopold might have thought about modern society’s faltering attempts to accept some of our most controversial creatures, more than a half century after he first suggested the idea.

Leopold in his day certainly suffered for his vocal views on trimming the deer herd and extending an olive branch to their predators. His sense of balance was derided by many of those charged with managing America’s wildlife. And even though the commenters on this blog would seem to back Leopold’s plea for a fuller, richer rendition of nature where the opportunities still exist, I wonder how widely or deeply that sentiment really runs. Karen posted a comment about her appreciations of the wolves now roaming her home state of Montana. Yet even as she writes, the recent stripping of federal protections for wolves in Montana and Idaho reminds us that those who fear and hate the big predators still wield the political clout.

And Harper raises a great point about making the best of those little strands of nature that will probably never again be fit for big beasts. But what about those places whose options have yet to be foreclosed?

Case in point: North America’s last remaining lion, the cougar, has lately been venturing eastward, apparently reclaiming the lost half of the continent that used to be its home. Lone males, seeking new territories and mates, have been showing up from Wisconsin to Louisiana—places people have forgotten they ever existed. And for their efforts, most of these pioneers are getting shot. Many are being killed on trumped up charges of public endangerment and livestock attacks. The bottom line: Those in charge—and a certain vocal segment of the citizens they represent—simply don’t want the big cats anywhere near where they live.

I wonder if we do too little thinking like a mountain, and too much acting like a gated community, no trespassers allowed. Nobody is seriously suggesting we foster cougars or wolves in Central Park. But contrary to what we’ve been led to believe, there remains a surprising number of places where with a little foresight and tolerance—of the kind Leopold so eloquently proposed—we could begin to restore the full sweep of nature’s diversity, lions included. I wonder what Leopold would think to see how far we’ve come since he dared to share such a vision.

Here's a thought: If it were deemed ecologically plausible to harbor mountain lions in your particular neck of the woods (assuming they're not already there), would you support a measure to reintroduce them? And why?

Dangerous Safety by Will Stolzenburg

Hello All!

With Curt signing off yesterday, I’m honored to be continuing the discussion on Aldo Leopold’s seminal essay, Thinking Like a Mountain. I’m here at the request of your hosts for this discussion, Anne Post and Karene Motivans and Friends of the National Conservation Training Center, because I’ve done some writing about the two central characters in Leopold’s Thinking—wolves and deer. More to the point, I’ve explored the ecological phenomenon that Leopold so presciently and eloquently summarized when he wrote the piece in 1944: the predator-prey relationship, and the unheralded contributions of our biggest meat-eating beasts to the beauty of nature and the quality of life.

There is far deeper meaning to be found in Thinking Like a Mountain than just the ecological worth of wolves and the devastations of too many deer. But I’d like to start there anyway, with what for me is the elemental irony so brilliantly portrayed by Leopold—that of the decay and dullness that stems from too little danger.

Leopold wrote of our eradication of wolves, and the ensuing irruption of deer:

I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise.

In the sixty-plus years since Leopold penned that famous passage, science has since backed his anecdote with hard evidence of exploding deer populations, missing wildflowers, and failing generations of trees where the wolves and cougars no longer hunt. They’ve charted the fall of songbirds, whose habitat is not only being parceled and paved over, but being eaten by the hungry herds.

It’s Sunday and I’m heading out for my weekly walk to catch the flow of spring as it rushes by. Today I’ll be listening to the trees, for singing from the warblers and thrushes and orioles returning from southern winter homes. I’ll be looking for the latest flowerings on the trail. But inevitably I’ll be suffering the bad moments, remembering that the flocks and the flowers are mere remnants of times past. And that a critical part of that demise we can trace via intricate pathways to missing wolves and cougars—the topmost carnivores whose absence has been filled by hordes of smaller predators (raccoons, possums, and housecats by the many millions, eating their way through the birdlife), and too many deer, turning vibrant forests into feedlots.

The question that concerns me now, is So what? Of the few who still walk the woods and fields these days, most seem to have no idea what’s missing. They see tall green trees and flowering weeds, they hear a few birds singing, and believe that all is well. And maybe it is. There are some who would argue that we can’t and shouldn’t go back—that this is the price of progress, the new balance, and we should satisfy ourselves with what is.

I have my opinions, but I wonder what you think.

Thinking About Thinking Like A Mountain by Curt Meine

I’m in my office today at the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, just a mile or so from Aldo Leopold’s iconic “shack” in Wisconsin. We have just concluded our staff meeting, a good portion of which was spent swapping stories about screening our new documentary film Green Fire. Various representatives of the Leopold Foundation have been fanning out to participate in screenings that are occurring across the country (and even overseas). Every place, and every audience, is different. But it is also fascinating to discover the common threads in our conversations.

The title of the film, of course, comes from “Thinking Like A Mountain” and Leopold’s youthful experience in seeing “a fierce green fire” in the eyes of the dying mother wolf that he had shot. In examining Leopold’s life and the continuing evolution of the land ethic, the film explores the history of that particular experience, and of the multiple potential meanings of the phrase. Along the way, we interviewed two special colleagues who remarked upon the phrase “green fire.” Peter Forbes (whom I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog) comments in the film: “In that one essay, that one moment when he saw the green fire, that was a transformational moment in his individual life. And it also suggests the transformational moment in our movement if we are willing to change ourselves.” And N. Scott Momaday, the eminent Kiowa writer and poet, remarks: “We all have the essence of the fierce green fire, that’s again our hope.”

My colleague Dr. Stan Temple mentioned in our meeting that, at a recent screening of the film in Idaho, staunch opponents and proponents of wolves were both present in the audience (as, no doubt, were many who are somewhere in the middle). In at least some of the conversations Stan had, the film seemed to provide a bit of a buffer zone in the pitched debate over wolf conservation and management. By illustrating Leopold’s experience with the green fire, we hoped that we could show that these are not simple or purely partisan political issues, but complicated matters of evolving conservation science, ethics, policies, and practice. So my questions for the day: What is the “transformation” and “change” we need to make in the conservation movement? What is the “essence of the green fire”? What meaning do you find in Leopold’s phrase? Is it possible in today's harsh political landscape to find common ground? What will it take?

[Editor's Note: See also the Forest Service's podcasts about the film Green Fire. Steve Dunsky speaks about how Leopold’s vision ties in with the evolving perspective of the Forest Service]

On Dullness and Dynamism by Curt Meine

Karene offered this comment on the previous post:

I have been thinking about this line in Leopold's essay..."We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness." Can you help me understand what he meant by dullness? Also - what should we strive for in our lives/careers to be able to think more like a "mountain"?

That sentence is Leopold at his most drily ironic. He sets us, the readers, up. These things – safety, prosperity, etc. – are, of course, wonderful goals and solid criteria of personal success… until he hits you with that “dullness.” For me, dullness here is a synonym for complacency. The sentence has to be read in connection to the phrase later in the paragraph: that “too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.” It does so, Leopold implies, in the affairs of both people and ecosystems.

An ever-expanding set of studies (most famously in Yellowstone) have documented the phenomenon that Leopold so lyrically described: prey populations and species, in the absence of their predators, can degrade ecosystem function. They do so not only through the raw increase in their numbers, but through changes in their movement and behavior. One of the lessons from Yellowstone and elsewhere is that ungulate populations, in the absence of predators, become more complacent; they become dull. Instead of moving about the landscape, vigilant in the presence of predators, they remain more stationary. The effects reverberate across the ecological community through a series of “trophic cascades.” Bill Ripple and Tom Beschta at Oregon State have studied these phenomena extensively, and coined the phrase “the ecology of fear” to describe these effects. (You might check out the recent documentary Lords of Nature: Life in a Land of Great Predators, which explores these themes. Will Stoltzenburg, who will take over this blog next week, served as the writer for that film.)

So Leopold distilled a lot in his phrase, alluding to the shortcomings of any simplistic measure of success (in conservation and in life); to the need to stay alert, attentive, and alive in the world; and to the utility of fear as a part of our set of inherited evolutionary responses to the world around us.

What should we strive for to be able to think more like a "mountain"? So many answers to that question! We should strive to think large-scale and long-term. We should consider the well-being of the entire system or community, and not just maximizing our short-term, particular interest within it. We should appreciate the limits of simple, linear, cause-and-effect thinking. We should seek to comprehend the dynamic, cascading effects of our choices and decisions on the broader human and natural communities that we exist within.

But above all, there is the point that Leopold was making in the very act of writing the essay: that we should not be afraid to challenge our own premises and evolve in our thinking as we grow though our lives. Leopold did not always strive to think like a mountain. But he challenged his own safe assumptions, warded off potential dullness, and helped to advance conservation in the process!

Dueling Essays: Aldo Leopold's "Thinking Like a Mountain" and Curt Meine's "The Once and Future Land Ethic" - Blog Discussion Begins May 1, 2011

Guest moderator William Stolzenburg will post ideas and observations about Aldo Leopold's "Thinking Like a Mountain" essay from the book, A Sand County Almanac (Oxford U. Press, 1949). We will also read Curt Meine's "The Once and Future Land Ethic" from his book Correction Lines: Essays of Land, Leopold, and Conservation (Island Press, 2004) and discuss how these two essays intersect as we scope out the future of wildlife refuges and American conservation (all essays and image above reproduced by permission of the publishers).   Comments are welcome prior to our discussion or email us at library@fws.gov.