I share this as a tonic to a lot of the discourse I see online from people exasperated at the negative changes we bring to our environment as humans. I have met many people who feel that humans are inherently destructive to the environment as well.
I think a separation from wildlife due to urbanization might have something to do with idea that humans are above or separate from nature. I feel picking up hobbies like gardening and hunting were important for reminding me of my presence as a part of the natural world (This might be one upside to COVID, given everyone I know started gardening and raising plants. Ha.).
I think the statement from the article encouraging locals to be included in the stewardship of natural resources is incredibly important. Especially in the US, where lots of our undisturbed land is owned by the Interior department or the states, many times, regional natives often have insight that can be beneficial for the landscape (ex. California allowing Indian tribes to conduct controlled burns as a means for preventing wildfires).
I just hope that this article can renew optimism for some, given the bleak things that we see weekly in the news regarding the environment and nature, that we can exist within nature without our actions (including modification) being bad. It’s too easy to feel that we’re just doomed and that nothing we do can be good for us or the rest of our ecosystem.
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I think a lot of people fall into the ideological trap of imagining humans as something outside of and distinct from nature. We are natural creatures that have evolved with and adapted to our environment for entire existence.
Human alteration of our habitat is natural, but that doesn’t necessarily mean good or bad for your given values.
Recognizing that existing in an environment inherently alters it is part of learning how humans function as part of ecosystems rather than as masters.
This reminded me of something I read in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer.
I gave the students in my General Ecology class a survey. Among other things, they were asked to rate their understanding of the negative interactions between humans and the environment. Nearly every one of the two hundred students said confidently that humans and nature are a bad mix. These were third-year students who had selected a career in environmental protection, so the response was, in a way, not very surprising. They were well schooled in the mechanics of climate change, toxins in the land and water, and the crisis of habitat loss. Later in the survey, they were asked to rate their knowledge of positive interactions between people and land. The median response was “none.”
I was stunned. How is it possible that in twenty years of education they cannot think of any beneficial relationships between people and the environment? Perhaps the negative examples they see every day— brownfields, factory farms, suburban sprawl—truncated their ability to see some good between humans and the earth. As the land becomes impoverished, so too does the scope of their vision. When we talked about this after class, I realized that they could not even imagine what beneficial relations between their species and others might look like. How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what the path feels like? If we can’t imagine the generosity of geese? These students were not raised on the story of Skywoman.
There are several other sections of this book that talk about humans’ mutually beneficial reciprocal relationship with nature. The section on how sweetgrass grows better when harvested regularly was another poignant one
I highly recommend reading, for anyone who’s interest was piqued by the excerpt