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.