just a specific fish, plant, or creature. Its purpose is “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved, and to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species.” The ESA makes explicit that the ecosystem underlies the existence of the individual. To protect the creature, its habitat must be conserved. As federal judge Beryl Howell wrote in her December 2014 decision regarding the continuing protection of gray wolves in the western Great Lakes, the ESA “reflects the commitment by the United States to act as a responsible steward of the Earth’s wildlife, even when such stewardship is inconvenient or difficult for the localities where an endangered or threatened species resides.”
For wolves, the expanded protection of wildlife corridors will allow for increased interaction between packs, which supports creation of new packs and fosters genetic strength. Although a female wolf will typically not breed with her father, other inbreeding occurs when populations are limited, leading to situations similar to that currently happening on Isle Royale in northern Michigan where, because of the island’s inaccessibility, the wolf population is weakened and likely to eventually die out due to lack of diversity. The larger wildlife landscapes of the Spine of the Continent initiative allow for healthier wildlife populations, protecting creatures from genetic demise.
A challenge in promoting connectivity projects such as the Spine of the Continent lies in their use of mapping, however, since maps draw targets by showing areas of potential change, areas presently inhabited by human beings. Viewed as threats to wildlife, people who live in targeted places on these maps are sometimes considered liabilities. Few want to be seen that way, or worse, asked to leave. Those who live and earn their livelihood in places mapped as potential migratory routes are understandably concerned and even angered. Tensions mount over this issue, and discussions of wildlife corridors can quickly become contentious. I sit for a few minutes to slip on the moccasins of those landowners and imagine their world. I find giving up my home and lifestyle for pronghorns and grizzlies a difficult thing to swallow.
Wolves, to retain genetic diversity and healthy social structures, require space to roam. While the typical territory of a wolf pack is approximately ten square miles, wolves can cover up to a hundred miles in a day. A GPS radio-collared wolf, known as OR7, has been tracked moving from his pack in northeast Oregon to California and back. He left Oregon in 2011, and traveled over three thousand miles in three years. He’s been nicknamed Journey. Echo, the wolf sighted on the north rim of the Grand Canyon in late 2014, had been collared near Cody, Wyoming, more than four hundred miles away. Though many young adult wolves disperse to begin new packs, the rest remain loyal to their pack and its territory. Those wolves typically roam, then return home. However, when wolves currently protected within national park borders travel outside of those boundaries during hunting season, they are vulnerable to hunters. Radio-collared wolves that are part of long-term research studies within these national parks have been killed while outside park borders, whether two or twenty miles beyond that safety line. The Spine of the Continent plan proposes to reduce the likelihood of such shootings by providing protected space around and between parks, allowing for the natural movement of mountain lions, wolves, and grizzly bears. Enlarging and connecting wilderness allows increased range for animals that have an innate need for space.
My family moved out west when I was eleven, my dad eager to get back to big land where he could ski mountains instead of valleys. The home my parents chose was in an offbeat sub-division at the top of a mountain pass fifteen miles east of Salt Lake City, where not everyone had water rights, but most had garages right next to the road. Snow fell deep and often. Our first year, it snowed September first and June first and on a regular basis in between. The house came with a snowplow, which my dad quickly upgraded, plowing our massive driveway storm after storm. That first winter he began making plans to build an addition that would place a new garage within ten feet of the road, not the thirty-plus where the existing garage currently sat.
Our low-slung, split-level, wood-sided house sat on the western ridge of the development, the back windows looking out over miles and miles of watershed, never to be built upon. Our front windows, facing east, were huge, offering panoramic views of sparsely populated valley down below through which Interstate 80 wove and further beyond, ridge after ridge of majestic peaks of the Uinta range, sixty miles distant. I had no idea skies could be so huge, that I could live on a mountain, that mountains could rim the edges of my world.
A few houses lined the road north of us, and to our south lay an expanse of sagebrush and bare dry earth, the only other houses so encased by pines and bends of the road that only a portion of roof top and the occasional glint of metal gutter were visible. Isolated from city life, even country village life, we were twenty minutes—in good weather—from a grocery store, schools, work, any kind of extra-curricular activity. A gas station and café sat at the interstate exit, one mile and two big hills below my house, and early on I learned that a quick bike ride down to buy a candy bar resulted in a twenty-five minute walk and push back home. My friends were ten- and fifteen-minute walks away, and though a few houses perched in between, most of what I walked past was sagebrush, oak, aspen, and wild native grasses. Grasshoppers clacked and flew past, a dragonfly might magically float along beside me for dreamlike moments. The soil was gray and rocky at the edge of the road. We had moved to something called high desert which was arid and parched when it wasn’t arid and covered with snow and ice.
We owned the sky above us in every direction, the air almost always clear and clean, the blue cloudless. I quickly learned the magic of Utah winters: snowstorms blanketing the land, wind whipping snow drifts to heights above my head, the world nothing but a blizzard of white, and then the clouds pass, breaking apart and away, and the skies turn blue as the sun sparkles and bounces from surface to surface, simultaneously blinding and thrilling the eye.
Here I learned the basics of conservation. Take what you need, and utilize well what you take. Never waste water: it is precious. Don’t use lights unless you need them, and always turn them off when you’re done. Plan ahead and consolidate your errand, work, and school trips. Make use of what you have, and be thoughtful with the earth’s resources. Arid land is fragile, wildlife wondrous and to be respected. Today’s snow is next spring’s wildflower and next summer’s drinking water. We are visitors, guests, stewards of the earth supporting and surrounding us. Act accordingly.
Stewardship is a concept espoused by most who work the land, by conservationists, by hikers and rock climbers and explorers, by those who run rivers and guide people on outdoor expeditions for a living. Experiencing changes over time brings home the effect we have on the land, and this effect is magnified in drier, western environments. Cryptobiotic soil illustrates the importance of understanding the landscape. It looks like a dark patch on sandy soil, but is actually alive. Made of lichens, algae, fungi, mosses and cyanobacteria, it not only helps retain moisture, but also stabilizes the dirt and sand, and plays a role in nitrogen fixation. One errant footstep destroys what may take from years to a century to re-form. Step here, don’t step there.
New discoveries blossom daily. When I’m introduced to a better way to grow vegetables, cut an onion, pedal my bike, I adopt new behaviors and become more efficient. More effective. When I learn that wild animals are at risk because of roads, fences, hunting licenses, or legislative actions, I want to change our rules and practices. But as a society, we move sluggishly. The fight for women’s right to vote began in the United States in the 1840s; the nineteenth amendment, establishing this right, was passed in 1920. In the mid-nineteenth century, sepsis—infection—killed almost half of all surgical patients. When surgeon Joseph Lister realized that infection seeps into patients via germs, he identified chemicals and processes to kill those germs. While he proved that germ-destroying cleansing of hands, tools, and wounds prevented sepsis and saved lives, his observations were greatly ignored, and a generation passed before Lister’s recommendations became routine. With their adoption, the practice of medicine changed. Both brilliant and wise, Max Planck once said that scientific truth doesn’t convert its opponents by being true, but instead becomes accepted when the naysayers finally die and the next generation grows up accustomed to it. Over time we’ve learned to build more structurally
