GAIA

Listen to the Bible

Environmentalists and conservationists are always wringing their hands and bewailing the deterioration of our planet’s ecosystems and wildlife due to man’s predations – planned or unplanned.

We humans are seen as the source of all the problems of the planet and, if not for us, the world would bloom with plants, trees and infinite non-human life.

It is therefore a bit of a shock for such activists to read the cover story in Time magazine on the state of nature in the USA today. (Time, December 9, 2013, pages 36-43)

Instead of decline and devastation, Gaia and her systems are doing fine, thank you -- to the point of excess!!!

1. Forests across the USA are still vast despite the rise in USA’s population to some 320,000,000 people.

This is because today humans tend to form dense small footprint clusters such as cities and towns:  New York at 8.34 million and the other top 9 cities account for 32.26 million people or 10% of the entire population -- in 10 urban dots. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population)  

Agriculture – i.e., the countryside - employs only some 5% of the population and including hamlets, villages and small towns, rural America accounts for only some 18% of the USA’s population according to the World Bank (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/rural-population-percent-of-total-population-wb-data.html).

Today, thanks to national and state parks and other wooded areas, forests cover some 75% of the US’s North Eastern, Great lakes, Mid-west, the South and the Rockies (Time, p.40). And according to estimates used by the US Dept. of Agriculture and Forest Service, forest areas today amount to 70% of the coverage in 1630, when colonists first arrived -- with most the deforested areas converted to farmland and animal husbandry. (p.3 of http://www.fia.fs.fed.us/library/briefings-summaries-overviews/docs/ForestFactsMetric.pdf).

 

2. Wildlife species that are forest based and that a short while ago seemed on the verge of extinction -- and were put on ‘protected lists’ -- are now at record numbers and exponentially increasing a la Malthus.

White tailed deer, according to the National Wildlife Research Center, have reached 30 million and growing – far more than in Columbus’s day.  Wild pigs, first brought to America in the 16^th century by Hernando de Soto, now number some 5 million and run amuck throughout the mainland’s 48 states (Time, p. 38).

The population explosion also applies to beavers, bald eagles, coyotes, wild turkeys, Burmese pythons – that make south Florida the world’s capital, alligators, bears and numerous others. 

Time’s chart of the top 10 wildlife population explosions (page 41) is as follows:

 

species	Numbers today	Increase since mid-20th century as percent
all deer	32,000,000	800  %
wild turkeys	8,000,000	1,500  %
Canada geese	5,700,000	370  %
wild pigs	5,500,000	120  %
racoons	5,000,000	2,700 %
beavers	5,000,000	2,400 %
alligators	5,000,000	400 %
black bear	450,000	320 %
cougars	100,000	1,600%
gray wolves	5,000	610 %

 

As urban and suburban areas are often near forested areas, and wild animals now regularly visit, feed and attack small pets, children and even adult humans in these residential areas, governments, even in Bambi-friendly New Jersey, are again encouraging hunting season and animal culls.

As a high school principal who spent years among northern Indian tribes once told me, humans have always been a part of nature’s system of checks and balances.  We are apex predators and nature has built in our participation to help maintain and restore wildlife balance.

A more important lesson and message from the Time article is this:

With forest coverage remaining vast, and in light of the current wildlife explosion, it is no longer tenable to blame humans, urbanization and industrialization for the record low forest wildlife populations in the 19^th through 20^th centuries --  as has long been the environmentalist’s battle cry.

We, the human ant, are a factor, but far less so than often assumed.

 

Gaia is mighty and resilient, and her ecosystems and life forms either bounce back, or due to ice age cycles, asteroid assault and the like, go through phases of decline, extinction and new birth.

America’s booming forest wildlife attests to this, and the need for human intervention: as we too, though small ants, are an element in maintaining balance.

                                                            +   +   +   +   +   +

I have not before quoted the Bible in this blog, but it seems apropos here.

The very first commandment was given to animals: Genesis ch 1:22   “. . . be fruitful and multiply”.

The very second commandment, given to mankind, is Genesis ch 1:28

“Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”