Pelicans vs Skimmers: How do You Encourage Biophilia?

Moderated by Jim Siegel, FWS - NCTC

In his essay, “The Extinction of Experience,” Robert Michael Pyle uses metaphor to describe two very different approaches to engaging nature: the Brown pelican dives into the ocean with its whole body when seeking a fish, but the Black skimmer gracefully flies along the surface of the sea, fishing with only its bottom beak in the water.  Pyle says human engagement of nature often reflects the style of one bird or the other:

“In my view, most people who consider themselves nature lovers behave more like skimmers than pelicans.  They buy the right outfits at L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer, carry field guides, and take walks on nature trails, reading all the interpretive signs.  They watch the nature programs on television, shop at the Nature Company, and pay their dues to the National Wildlife Federation or the National Audubon Society.  These activities are admirable, but they do not ensure truly intimate contact with nature.  Many such "naturalists" merely skim, reaping a shallow reward....How can we engage our biophilia?”

In the conservation field, we work with people on a daily basis.  We may interact in different capacities – some of us in large office complexes, some of us in the field or on a refuge.  How do you leverage these interactions to cultivate your own inner pelican? In what ways are you helping others shift beyond “skimming” nature so they can more deeply connect with what’s wild? 

A Paradise of Frogs

by John Hanson Mitchell

Moderator: Jim Siegel, FWS - NCTC

In his essay, A Paradise of Frogs, John Hanson Mitchell found that in civilizing his Massachusetts yard he had lost his beloved frogs.   When he realizes his mistake, he attempts to re-wild his property by putting in small ponds and letting the grass and weeds go.  After reading the short excerpt, have you ever tried to re-wild a place? Is this even possible given the American ideal is mowing, trimming and landscaping for a well manicured lawn?  Mitchell’s observations can serve as a critique of our national obsession with the mowed lawn. 

 

 

We can think that a neat yard is simply the natural order of things in a modern society.  Yet, the lawn aesthetic is hardly some pan-human value.  It’s existence in 21^st century America is part of our English endowment from the Tudor and Elizabethan eras, only becoming common place in our country as mowing machines replaced scythes and grazing by sheep in the 19^th century, with the aesthetic exploding in the 1950s as suburbs spread into rural country-sides.   Today the lawn is an important aspect of the interaction between the natural environment and the constructed urban and suburban space in the entire U.S., no matter the natural community or climate.

 

In a thought experiment that could have come right out of Jared Diamond’s Germs, Guns and Steel, what would be our national yard aesthetic  if our country had been initially founded by another culture, say people native to Peru or New Guinea.  All I know is that we could have certainly saved ourselves a lot of time, effort and treasure, and protected millions of acres of wild nature, to boot.