Wild Connections

Wildlands Don’t Exist There

by Tod Bacigalupi

When we go to places like the Himalayas in Nepal or the Andes in Ecuador, we believe we’ll see wild places.  Huge mountains, places of great beauty and maybe a snow leopard or a spectacled bear.  I’ve seen the beauty, but not the predators or the wild. 



Crystal Mountain from monastery, Nepal

I’ve been lucky to have been in Nepal and in Ecuador during the last year, and the thing that stands out most to me is that wildlands don’t exist there. Representative of the majority of second and third world countries, both have incredible mountains, glaciers, and high peaks. 

But wildlands as we understand them in the United States don’t exist.  Wild open spaces where predators and prey interact in a mostly natural way don’t exist.  The only areas of either country without people are those areas where there can’t be farming or habitation.  In other words, rock and ice.  The big predators are virtually gone from both countries, and neither has a concept of a land ethic.  



Inca road paved with stone, Ecuador

For more than a millennium the Andes have been occupied by indigenous peoples who farmed and grazed to elevations just shy of 15,000 feet.  The Incas constructed roads from Argentina to Ecuador and Columbia and mined the land for its gold and precious metals.  Before them the Cañari acted similarly. 

Where there is agriculture, including the domestication of grazing animals, there follows a natural response to predators -- getting rid of them.  The descendants of the Incas and the Cañari retain the same response: predators are bad, and must be eliminated for survival.  So now cattle graze at 14-15,000 feet.  In the Himalayas, it’s goats and yak that graze to 17,000 feet, but the attitude is the same, no predators allowed.



The school at Chakra Bhot, Nepal
 

The National Parks in Nepal are little different from the rest of Nepal; they are occupied by people living in large and small villages.  The largest villages end around 14,000 feet, but villages can be found at from 15,000 to 17,000 feet.  Thus lands that could be wild are occupied. The fact that the snow leopard is protected means little to the people whose goats are prey. The predators in Nepal are virtually gone, along with the wild intact ecosystem. 

The idea of a land ethic is important.  Aldo Leopold proposed the idea that the land as a whole should be treated with respect. The land ethic was a natural extension of ancient Greek and later European philosophy to extend the right of existence to the land.  In the United States this now means “leave no trace” allowing the land to remain undisturbed in every way.  Wilderness areas exemplify this idea.  Where a core reserve is surrounded by a buffer, and connected to other core reserves, the wild can flourish, even expand.

Our concept of wilderness protection is foreign (no pun intended) to the Ecuadorian or Nepali.  Indeed only rich foreigners could come up with such a bizarre idea.  For these developing nations, the land only has a value when it is used, and may even be abused when not used. 

Nepal presents the starkest contrast between the US and the third world in treatment of “wildlands.”  Yarsagumba is a caterpillar that dies underground.  The Chinese believe it to be a miracle cure for any number of ills. During Yarsagumba season, thousands of people migrate to the land between 12,000 and 14,000 feet to dig for the valuable insect.  On one trail, in two days, we passed multitudes of men, women, children all in search of “gold” in the form of caterpillars.  And all without even the most basic idea of taking care of the land. From simple food wrappers to feces; the trail was covered in waste.  In only two days every possible piece of wood had been cut for warmth and the area was stripped. This was only the first two days of the Yarsagumba season in the Shey/Poksundo National Park. 

There is no land ethic

The same tearing up and messing up was going on at Annapurna and throughout Nepal, representative of an idea that the land has no value, i.e. the absence of a land ethic.

A friend from Ecuador came to visit me in Colorado, and when we hiked Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, she was amazed by how pristine the land was, and how little the evidence of human intrusion.  She saw no litter, no trash.  Leave no trace was a reality.  For her, this was culture shock. 

Almost by definition only rich countries can have a land ethic. Only rich countries can afford to let the land be. The similarity between Nepal and Ecuador is striking, and for the environmentalist, sad.  Despite their natural beauty, the ecosystems are no longer intact, and the possibility of restoration is slim. The villager in the Himalayas must subsist, and the Ecuadorian peasant is little different.  Only tamed land allows survival. 

Have we accomplished anything?

Dreaming of wildlands for all species, before my travels in Nepal and Ecuador, I wasn’t sure US environmentalists had accomplished much.  I was discouraged by our political climate; the push for natural gas, the potential opening of ANWR, and the lack of money for environmental causes due to the recession.  I watched Wild Connections struggling to survive in hard economic times, and wondered, “Is it worth the effort?”  I wondered if we had accomplished anything.  

But in Ecuador, National Parks are created at the whim of national leaders, and then sold to the oil companies.  In Nepal, the National Parks are created for the tourist and for the money they bring.  In no case are the National Parks created for the species that dwell there. 

Unique in the world

So every bit of land preserved in the United States as wilderness, wilderness study area, roadless or just non-motorized sector is a unique feature in the world.  All of the care we take with our wild areas and the species that live there is also unique.  We are lucky as a highly industrialized society that can afford to protect the wild, and do so not because the land is more valuable left alone, but do so because the land has value as it is.   