Aldo Leopold, often regarded as the father of conservation, once wrote: “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” This quote resonated with me from the first moment I read it over 50 years ago. I recognized myself as one of those who cannot live without wild things—or wild places.
My happiest childhood memories are of camping out with my family in wild areas of Colorado and Wyoming. I didn’t know, and still don’t know, exactly where we were, but I knew that we were in the wilds because we traveled a long distance to get to our camp sites, there were no other people, or even evidence of people around. I loved the wide-open spaces, the vast night skies full of stars, and the opportunities to wander and explore nature around the family campsites. Whether it was getting an eye to eye look at a small bird, attempting to catch frogs and tadpoles in a mountain pond, chasing lizards among the yuccas, sniffing the pungent fragrance of sagebrush, or watching a herd of pronghorn race across the prairie, I felt most at home, and happiest, when we were far away from our family house in the suburbs of Denver.
As an adult, my love of the wild led me to seek a degree in wildlife biology at CSU, and eventually took me to Alaska. There I worked in truly remote areas—studying seabirds on uninhabited islands of the Gulf of Alaska, researching bird migration along the icy coast of an uninhabited cape of arctic tundra in northwestern Alaska, studying forest songbirds on the Kenai Peninsula, and seeking the nest of a secretive seabird in the rainforests of southeast Alaska. During those years, I survived a capsized boat in the surf, hordes of mosquitos, being charged by a mama moose, way too close for comfort encounters with grizzlies, black bears, and even a polar bear, plus more than a couple near heart-stopping moments in small aircraft. But those were among the best times of my life. I went on from those jobs to work as a naturalist guide with Lindblad Expeditions, a position that has taken me to many more wild places around the world, from Baja California to the high arctic, the Amazon River to Antarctica.
After 30 years working in Alaska and traveling around the world, my husband and I decided to move back to Colorado where I was born and raised. We were fortunate to buy property some distance away from any city. When our kids grew into teenagers and petulantly asked me why we chose to live so far away from town and their friends, I truthfully told them, “Because I couldn’t live in town and truly be happy. I am someone who cannot live without wild things.”
Yet as much as Aldo Leopold’s words, “some who cannot” still resonate with my spirit, I now realize he was wrong.
You may know that the Apollo 13 mission to the moon was aborted when an explosion on the rocket caused a malfunction in the life support system of their small rocket ship. This quickly endangered the lives of the three astronauts on board due to a dangerous build up of carbon dioxide. All of us live on a much larger rocket—sometimes called spaceship Earth. So the words of that Apollo 13 astronaut radioing for help, “Houston, we have a problem” echo over and over in my mind as I see the explosion of human impacts on Earth’s life support systems. A buildup of CO2 in our atmosphere is just one of many rapid changes adversely affecting our home planet.
Three and a half billion years ago, Earth’s atmosphere contained almost no oxygen. That ancient atmosphere was transformed into the atmosphere we breathe today by untold billions of cyanobacteria, microscopic creatures we now consider primitive life forms. They converted carbon dioxide, sunlight and water into chains of carbon while releasing oxygen to the atmosphere.
Lucky for us. They made our planet Earth habitable for humans, bears, birds, bees — indeed most of the estimated 8.7 million amazing forms of life with which we humans share this planet. Today about 21 percent of our atmosphere is oxygen. This life-sustaining mix is maintained by a balance between the CO2 we humans and other living things breathe out or otherwise release, and the oxygen produced by photosynthetic organisms. From the great boreal forests of the north, the Atlantic forests of the east, redwood forests in the west, the cork and laurisilva forests of Europe, the eucalyptus forests of Australia, and most significantly tropical forests around the world, over 10 trillion trees give off oxygen through photosynthesis, continually renewing about 20 percent of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere.
Another 70 percent of Earth’s oxygen is continuously renewed by microscopic phytoplankton and algal kelp in the oceans. In part, due to these wild things, the oceans also absorb about 100 million tons of CO2 every day. Unfortunately, the current total release of CO2 each day from all sources, including the burning of fossil fuels, exceeds this number, so the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere is building. To prevent a deadly buildup, we humans clearly need the billions of wild things that maintain Earth’s breathable, oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Our situation is little different in terms of water. Through transpiration, trees and plants extract groundwater from the soil and return it to the atmosphere where it forms clouds that re-deliver the life-giving water to other lands, lakes, rivers and the oceans. By intercepting precipitation and by penetrating and aerating the soil with their roots, trees and other plants also slow runoff and increase the amount of water seeping underground to restore our aquifers—our underground water supplies.
Wetlands around the world provide free and efficient sewage treatment workers. Through their labors, wetlands filter pollutants and sediments from water, break down suspended solids and neutralize harmful bacteria. Wetlands also provide extremely valuable flood control and are the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth.
Suffice to say—all of us depend upon wild things both to help maintain and purify our water supplies, above and below ground. Without wild things, our sources of clean, potable water are in danger. Deforestation and land clearing results in far less precipitation being returned to the atmosphere and aquifers. In some places, clearing of forests has turned lush rainforests into barren deserts.
Did you have anything to eat today? Chances are you can thank something wild for your meal. One out of every three bites of food we eat comes from a plant that relies on some kind of animal for pollination. European honeybees get a lot of the good press, but they are just pollination publicity hogs. Native bees (over 900 different species occur in Colorado alone), butterflies, beetles, flies, birds and even bats are the primary pollinators for many of our food crops.
Have you eaten an avocado recently? Enjoyed a margarita? Put black pepper on your steak? Thank a bat! Have you savored a piece of chocolate lately? Thank a midge fly!
Sure, there are folks creating miniature mechanical drones in a crazy attempt to imitate the currently free services provided by the millions of tiny wild things that pollinate two thirds of human food crops. Apparently, these people think that someday soon, many pollinating animals won’t be around to provide the free pollination services we humans, and most of the other animals on Earth, rely upon to keep a diversity of plants growing and producing seeds, fruits and other sources of food. They may be right. But what these inventors may not understand is if the pollinators disappear, their little drones won’t save us from the impacts of a loss of Earth’s biodiversity.
Pollinators get a lot of attention, but they are far from the only wild creatures that food-producing plants rely upon, Nutrients are returned to the soil by the actions of a myriad of insects and other wild organisms that break down the remains of dead plants and animals. And at least ninety percent of plant species rely directly on fungi to help them absorb nutrients from the soil. We must recognize that without a great diversity of wild things and all they do to help plants grow and reproduce, we humans would not have enough food to eat.
Our reliance on wild things is not simply for oxygen, water and food. Nearly all of the chemicals that we humans use for medicine also come from wild things. Over half of the most prescribed medicines in the U.S. were originally discovered and created by wild organisms in nature. As of 1995, less than one percent of all tropical plant species had been screened for potential pharmaceutical applications. Now habitats are being destroyed more quickly than scientists can investigate their organisms for possible medicinal values. At current extinction rates, experts estimate that the Earth may be losing at least one potentially important medicine every two years.
Where would we humans be without all the inspiration provided by wild things? From Icarus to the Wright brothers, our inspiration to get airborne came from flying birds and insects. Did you know the highest speed train in the world, the Japanese bullet train was designed by a scientist who used ideas he got from studying the silent flight of owls, the underwater flight of penguins, and the bill shape of kingfishers? Not only engineers and technology are inspired by nature. How much of human literature was inspired by nature? How much of our music and art?
Most of the tourists with whom I have traveled the world were older people who had made enough money in their lifetimes that they could do whatever they chose. I remain struck by the fact that for so many very wealthy people, their choice was to spend the last years of their lives traveling to wild places to discover and learn about the amazing diversity of plants and animals with whom we share our planet. That says something about the intrinsic value of nature. More and more research has revealed that time spent in nature reduces anxiety, improves thinking skills and creativity, and rejuvenates children and adults.
As we humans inexorably change our planet, we are running the risk of altering the livability of our planet. Increasing levels of CO2 do not yet threaten to choke us, but as the oceans absorb more CO2, their waters are becoming more acidic—with dire consequences for many of the phytoplankton that form the basis of oceanic food chains, help remove CO2 from the atmosphere and produce the oxygen we breathe. Increased atmospheric CO2 is trapping more of the sun’s heat, warming our planet enough that the extra heat is melting polar ice fields and glaciers. The melting ice threatens to change global ocean currents and raise seawater levels around the globe.
Everywhere on Earth, we humans are altering or destroying nature. Billions of trees are lost each year to development, logging, agriculture and wildfire. In the last 100 years alone, over half the wetlands on Earth have been lost. As a result of these and other human-caused changes, scientists estimate we are currently losing 150 species to extinction every day. A planet full of micro-organisms changed our planet 3.5 billion years ago. Unquestionably we humans are doing something similar today.
So, Aldo Leopold was clearly wrong when he wrote: “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” Truthfully, “the some who cannot” includes me, you and every one of us—all of humankind—whether most of us know it or not. The challenge we face is finding ways to work together to reduce the rate of climate change and diminish the accelerating loss of wild places and wild organisms. This work begins with helping everyone understand that none of us can live without wild things and wild places.
© Susan E. Quinlan
A naturalist, artist, and author, Susan E. Quinlan brings a lifetime of nature exploration and research to her writing and illustrations. Trained as a wildlife biologist, with degrees from Colorado State University (B.S.) and the University of Alaska (M.S.), Quinlan conducted wildlife research in Alaska and also developed many educational materials about nature. She went on to work as a naturalist guide for Lindblad Expeditions. This enabled her to explore and learn about diverse environments from the high arctic to rainforests, arid deserts to oceanic islands.
Quinlan’s previous books for young readers, published by Boyds Mills Press and Carolrhoda Books, have received awards and recognition from the International Reading Association, The Junior Library Guild, and the National Science Teaching Association and Children’s Book Council. Visit her website at: www.susanquinlan.com
The Colorado Book Club Resource is the proud owner of a set of ten copies of One Single Species, which is available to book clubs across the state thanks to the State Library’s partnerships with local libraries. Find out more about the Book Club Resource.
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