Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
We have forgotten the flocks of passenger pigeons that blotted out the sun, the herds of bison that shook the ground, and the untamed places in which we destroyed them. This is ecological amnesia. This capacity to forget, this fluidity of memory, has dire implications in a world dense with people, all desperate to satisfy their immediate material needs. Yet, the way forward is land and water protection and regeneration, permaculture, and community reconnection with the wild.
As US Republicans take aim at wolves in Alaska, research into their vocalizations found multiple identifiable “dialects” that establish differences between species.
Welcome to the Anthropocene age, where humans have transmogrified the planet, its oceans and atmosphere, caused mass extinctions and wholesale contamination that will remain for millennia. Beyond the politicians and scientists, the way forward remains in the hands of writers, artists, and designers taking inspiration from wild earth in a movement called Geo-Fauvism.
Christopher Ketcham writes on our continuing anthropogenic (human-caused) extinction, and the ineffectual and often misguided attempts at appeasement for the destroyers of wilderness and consumers of the Earth’s bounty. E.O. Wilson’s push for parks and wilderness connected by corridors: half for us, half for them, might just be the answer.
Dahr Jamail’s essay illustrates how scientists are starting to acknowledge that the startling environmental changes happening worldwide, including massive ice melts, extreme weather such as super typhoons, wildfire, heat waves, and droughts, as well as the growing acidification of ocean waters, could result in massive species extinctions, including us.
Following the footsteps of Willis E. Pequegnat, a biologist from the 1930s who explored the wild Santa Ana Mountains in Orange, Riverside, and San Diego Counties, this video field journal logs the wonders and threats to this thriving resource.