the small. And soon, the caribou population weakens, with the small producing more small caribou and the weak and ill creating more weakness and illness. One night the first woman asks the Great Spirit what they might do to return the caribou to health so that good meat and skins might again bless them. The Great Spirit tells the woman to return to the ice, to the hole she had made, where she will receive the answer. When she returns to that spot, she sees a great and beautiful animal coming from the hole; it is the wolf, amorak. Here, says the Great Spirit, is the animal who will hunt the caribou, taking the ill, the small, the weak. The wolf will keep the caribou healthy so that you and your children will again benefit from what they can give you. And thus the wolf ranges the land, raising pups and teaching them their role in keeping the caribou herd strong, playing their part in the way of the world.
This fable provides insight into the connectedness of the natural world, and suggests that humans may not always possess the innate wisdom they imagine. We are of the earth, but our tendency to overuse and destroy is so robust it overpowers our knowledge of that oneness. Instead of killing only enough buffalo to feed us, and letting them repopulate to feed us again, we shoot them to near extinction. We dam rivers, impeding or blocking salmon migration and decreasing spawning grounds, until events like the Klamath River fish kill of 2002 occur—sixty-five thousand dead adult salmon. We allow domestic cattle to trample streambeds, destroying habitat and food for uncountable wildlife populations. Wisdom about living on the land comes from time spent listening to, watching, and learning from the landscape. Sage advice comes from indigenous peoples, and is found even in fable and myth. Scientists propose action based on data collection, research outcomes. Philosophers consider morality, the ethics of behavior. My greatest strength as a human being is the ability to listen to all of these—the sage, the scientist, the philosopher—and to change my behavior when I learn that I should. To commune with the earth, to return to the hole in the ice, to welcome a new ally.
In 1982, The Talking Heads recorded a song called “This Must Be the Place.” Not a hit at the time of release, it has since grown in popularity, now covered by a handful of other bands and a staple on classic alternative rock playlists. An anything-but-typical love song, it has one particular line that hooks me: home, is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there. This line speaks two truths: home as a craving, and paradoxically, home as something that can be found anywhere. Home to me is sanctuary, the two words synonymous, and I am a ruthless protector of this space. In my sanctuary love is the foundation. Peace reigns. And expressed moments of frustration are accepted and forgiven. While most Americans reside in just a handful of homes during his or her lifetime, I am on my nineteenth. Dorm room, squished apartment, sprawling rambler on a hillside. What makes home home for me are soft places to curl up and read, private spaces and, ideally, nooks and crannies where surprises hide: a stack of themed books, a clock made of bicycle parts. Table and floor lamps. Framed family photographs perched in bookshelves and on tables and on dressers and on a wall or two or five. Books, everywhere, neatly aligned or haphazardly stacked, and rugs, soft and thick. Home has a strong roof and locking doors and windows that raise and lower to capture breezes and keep out rain and bitter cold. Home is safe for feelings and thoughts, and safe for its accoutrements and occupants. It is a place for respite, for rest, for eating. For nurturing, loving, creating, working, playing, sharing, being. Home expands outward to the yard with its flowers, trees and grasses, and the neighborhood. Home spreads up the hill and down the street and on a day when the sky is heavy with clouds, rain falls, and a rainbow pokes from hillside to distant valley, the entire city is home and my heart expands to encompass it all.
The deer, the elk, the beaver, squirrel, and coyote—all creatures have their own versions of home. Tunnels in the ground that open into dens, or acres of wildness. Aldo Leopold wrote—which strikes me in the heart—that wilderness areas are a series of sanctuaries. Sanctuaries, places of the natural world, places of peace and growth. However, the greatest difference between the homes of wildlife and those of humans is in their level of safety. The deer has no lock, the elk has no walls. Wildlife is constantly threatened by predators, humans near the top of that list. We are constantly intruding and encroaching upon traditional homes that belong to wildlife, forcing these creatures to live in increasingly smaller areas. We take, we confine. We call it hunting, we call it managing, we call it manifest destiny. We consider it ours. And as the human population continues to grow we expand further and further into land that is something else’s home.
Wolves live in family groups that stake and mark their territory, and they vigorously defend their land. Yellowstone research shows that most adult wolf deaths in the park are attributed to territorial disputes. However, two- and three-year-old wolves frequently disperse, leaving the pack to find a mate and establish his or her own family. Wolves are fabulous long distance travelers. Migrating wolves face challenges in the Western states because current law protects them in some areas but not others. Even Yellowstone Park wolves, during hunting season, are unprotected once they step outside park boundaries.
A movement afoot recognizes the challenge that humans and wildlife face living together on this planet. The Spine of the Continent Initiative, envisioned by Michael Soulé and supported by scores of other scientists and conservationists across North America, seeks to establish landscape connectivity and migratory corridors throughout our continent, allowing those creatures who migrate north and south to safely navigate their journeys, while also allowing wildlife to flow between our currently separated national parks, wildlife refuges, and other such areas. Without connected corridors, populations can become isolated and diminished, putting them genetically at risk. Imagine expanding our wilderness areas so that in corners and strips and stretches they touch each other, allowing wildlife safe, continuous passage from one area to another. Mary Ellen Hannibal, in The Spine of the Continent, explores the story of the pronghorn antelope of Wyoming, showing how multi-generational migratory patterns dictate a herd’s activity, and how man’s activity can affect these patterns. A narrow road that bisects a migratory path can wreak havoc with a herd’s journey, as can fences, because pronghorns, while capable of jumping, will not jump over a fence, preferring to slither underneath if there is enough of an opening. If there isn’t enough slithering room, they will often turn away from their path and that fence, and change a migratory pattern. What the pronghorn have done for thousands of years can be undone by a few strands of tightly strung barbed wire.
To establish a safe migration corridor for the pronghorns, two biologists rallied agencies with jurisdiction over the herd’s territories—from the Bridger-Teton National Forest and the Grand Teton National Forest to Wyoming Fish and Game and the National Elk Refuge to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the BLM—and private property owners, as well. The result is a protected pathway for this herd to travel, one free of fences and traffic. Spine of the Continent supporters want to expand this type of effort across the continent. The swath of creature-safe migratory pathways ideally extends from northernmost Canada, through the United States and down into Mexico, following the ridges of five thousand miles of the Rocky Mountains. This contiguous corridor will require hundreds of negotiations to finance and establish wildlife rights-of-way easements, passage over or under freeways, and other innovations in order to succeed. A long, connected path of wilderness protected from automobiles, guns, fences, and other human hazards, this stretch of land will enable safe migration and intermingling for hundreds of species, millions of animals, albeit one fenceless parcel or wildlife overpass at a time.
Yellowstone and other rigidly protected areas become anchors with “overlapping zones of various protection regimes and conservation goals radiating out from them, like petals from the center of a rose,” as Emma Marris describes in Rambunctious Garden. As humans move further and further into places once remote and difficult to reach, what we consider natural areas tend to contract, able to support fewer and fewer individuals within a species. Since they require greater ranges, large species populations first decrease, then possibly disappear from the area. But many small species will disappear from these diminished natural areas, too, because a difficult year—one of drought, sickness, pestilence—can wipe out an entire, reduced, population. By protecting wildlife in these connected zones, we increase the chances that species will become neither endangered nor extinct.
The Endangered Species
