It’s not ours, it’s just our turn: conservation in the modern world
How do we preserve wilderness with 8 billion people on the planet?
We have a bleak outlook. We are living in the Holocene — the geological period of time following the last ice age. Much of the change of the last 10,000 years is out of our control but much of the change is from human activity. As our human population increased from 1 billion in 1800 to 8 billion today, the need to feed and house this growing population has strained the planet.
I’ll save you the exhaustive review of headline snippets you’ve already read through a dozen times before (biodiversity, arable land, etc). Instead, I’m focusing on the thought process behind the ecological solutions in play today.
The Public Land System
The public land system of the United States (since emulated by many countries across the world) is ingenious. People flocking to cities during the industrial revolution caused more and more people to become disconnected from nature. Rural vacancy led to more and more consolidation of large swaths of land. Over time people became less involved with the ecosystem and the stewardship of the land fell into the hands of landowners.
For the responsible landowner, this is a great opportunity. Buying up more and more land allows sustainable practices to demonstrate their efficacy and strengthen the ecosystem. Crop rotation to promote soil health, diverse landscapes to encourage biodiversity, organic (fecal) fertilizers instead of salt-based fertilizers to promote soil health, regulated hunting to prevent population imbalances, etc. A responsible landowner controlling large swaths of land can be a beautiful thing.
For the exploitative landowner, this can turn into a legal shakedown of the local ecosystem. Nearly every sustainable practice listed in the previous paragraph can be turned upside down to pursue a greater profit. Great crop yields, cheaper crop management, elimination of “pests” that eat crops or destroy property (deer, bear, bison, squirrel, beaver, etc), prospect mining, and any other profit-driven endeavor can be legally pursued and the landowner will be rewarded for their efforts. Nothing is illegal or inherently wrong about this, but the ecosystem comes second to the landowner’s will.
In the face of the near eradication of elk, bison, deer, moose, and other hunted species around 1900, a few people in positions of power decided to take action. Over the course of many decades, the ideals of Public Lands started to come into view and millions of acres of federally owned land were protected from development. This presented a new structure of land management that preserved the wilderness for the good of the public, both today and in the future.
The only thing you can count on is change
I’ve always wondered what Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and the other architects of our public land system would think about our present world. They understood human desire and built a feedback loop to protect our wilderness from human exploitation. Their hard work directly created the Sierra Club, National Forests, and National Parks while their influence shaped the creation of the Bureau of Land Management, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency. They might have complicated pasts, but their actions are the reason some of our most beautiful locations haven’t been developed, why wildlife has prospered across North America in the last 100 years, and why endangered species are provided such incredible protections.
When they were spending their political capital to conserve public lands around 1900, the world was a very different place: there were 75% fewer people on the planet, the world wars hadn’t occurred yet, the world was much more rural, and modern valuable elements like cobalt, lithium, and copper weren’t in demand like the present.
All in all, I’d say they did a pretty good job constructing the ideals of public land as an investment rather than just a commodity. Sure, there are many problems that are threatening this framework but it has largely stood the test of time. However, innovation marches on. Natural resources that were at one time worthless can now power entire industries and modes of communication. With more and more people demanding more electronic devices, more trips, more homes, and more experiences, I don’t see this framework of ecological protection lasting much longer in its current form.
Modern pressures on the landscape
Native Americans were displaced to satiate greed under the auspices of safety, international power, etc. Wolves were eradicated with the highly persistent strychnine for decades under the auspices of safety for people and livestock. Nuclear weapons were manufactured and tested across the globe under the auspices of safety. Our species has a great ability to engage in short-sighted, self-serving, and dangerous endeavors in the name of safety.
Society will continue to pressure the ecosystem until it breaks and we will do so under the same banner of safety, prosperity, and fiduciary responsibility. It’s in our nature.
A recent proposal to develop 6 acres of land near the Vail ski resort in Colorado exemplifies everything this article alludes to. The situation centers around developing land near the Vail ski resort in order to build on-site employee housing. This allows Vail employees, who are normally priced out of living nearby, to live near the resort. For the resort and its employees, this is an easy solution to the growing problem of seasonal workers being unable to afford to live near the resort.
However, this decision greatly impacts the winter range of the native bighorn sheep. These sheep have been pushed around for decades as Vail expanded and they are occupying slivers of land that exist between human infrastructure. If this project pushes forward, these sheep will continue to be pushed away from their native range and onto unfamiliar landscapes. This isn’t a death sentence but displacing a species from its native range can hasten its decline. It often takes reintroduction into a native range for a previously endangered animal to thrive.
If sheep were abundant or there was copious habitat for them to thrive, perhaps this wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, there are only 7000 bighorn sheep in Colorado. If the locals, with a nuanced perspective of the landscape, wanted to build this housing complex, perhaps this wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, this decision is being driven by Vail Resorts, a publicly traded resort company trying to lower its operating costs.
Fighting over land is nothing new, but the power of media makes this era of land grabs a little different. In the past, monied interests would either own or reach out to a friend that owns a newspaper in order to disseminate their side of the story. In modern times that still happens, but influencers across all platforms can be used to promote an angle of a story to make it feel more organic. These ‘small’ voices can be trumpeted to make the masses feel like this perspective is shared by many.
Both sides of the Gore Range sheep argument have their supporters trying to garner support. Vail Resorts has everything from corporate messaging praising their aggressive yet responsible growth strategies for investors to supporters on Substack that paints concerned locals as people ‘sitting around with voodoo dolls just thinking up people to curse.’ I wish this was just spin, but please click the link and read for yourself.
On the wildlife conservation side of the argument, Shakespeare’s quote ‘politics makes for strange bedfellows’ couldn’t be a more apt statement because both hunting groups and animal welfare groups have come out to criticize Vail Resorts’ actions. Howl For Wildlife, a platform to crowdsource support for hunting and fishing, led petitions and talked at length about Vail’s proposed expansion. Wildlife biologists and concerned locals tried to work with Vail Resorts by offering to buy land, exchange land, set up conservation easements, and more but Vail Resorts complained of years of delays and increased costs.
What can be done?
The Gore Range bighorn sheep situation is just a microcosm of the international profits vs local carrying capacity problems across the country. Exchange Vail Resorts vs sheep for palm oil plantations vs the Amazon rainforest, lithium mining vs sage grouse, copper mining vs salmon, fish oil supplements vs the Chesapeake Bay, and the list goes on.
I don’t know the solution but the problem is clear: diffusion of responsibility within international corporations allows the exploitation of local resources. At least in the United States, we seem to have lost a sense of community, an understanding of our place in time and space. Perhaps the deluge of negative stories leaves people feeling helpless — I feel that from time to time.
I find strength from the quote in the title of this article. “It’s not ours, it’s just our turn” comes from Doug Duren, a conservationist from the midwest.
Modeling correct, sustainable behavior for the young seems to be the only way out of this self-serving culture of profits we find ourselves in. Next time you notice someone watching your actions, consider doing the hard thing, the responsible thing, the sustainable thing. Culture doesn’t turn overnight but even a small wind can push a large ship.
