Thinking Like a Mountain: An Ecological Perspective on Earth

By R. Edward Grumbine

In Thinking Like a Mountain, we have excerpted a clear and inviting introduction to the science of conservation biology from Ed Grumbine's previous book, Ghost Bears.  Grumbine offers a succinct and evocative description of why we should all care about biodiversity, protected lands, connectivity, and extinction rates, and the advantages to be gained by attempting to 'think like a mountain', as so eloquently phrased by Aldo Leopold.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Sep 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781610914208

Book preview

www.islandpress.org/essentials.

As the crickets’ soft autumn hum

is to us

so are we to the trees

as they are

to the rocks and hills.

Gary Snyder, Little Songs for Gaia

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Introduction

In July 2011, a photograph of a mature grizzly bear was published in the Seattle Times, proving that the animal still wanders the Greater North Cascades Ecosystem in Washington state and southern British Columbia. The last picture of a grizzly in the region had been snapped in 1996, though indirect evidence (tracks, scat) showed grizzlies to be in the greater ecosystem since about the time Ghost Bears was first published in 1992. Biologists believe that there are some 20 animals roaming the North Cascades backcountry, but people almost never encounter them; this is one reason why I chose the book’s title.

But there were other reasons to consider grizzly bears as ghosts in the greater North Cascades. I wrote Ghost Bears to help readers to understand the just-evolving science of conservation biology with its emphasis on protecting biological diversity, to explain how species like grizzlies may remain present in ecosystems even as they fade away to become less-functional members of natures’ uncertain order, and to track how U.S. environmental laws, policies, and values were set to accommodate these new scientific insights—or not. With a new photograph of the ghost bear to rekindle a sense of both fear and respect in the fate of this iconic predator, along with 20 years of insights about conservation science and policy implementation in the US, here is a brief update of ghost bears, greater ecosystems, and the biology of thinking like a mountain.

Twenty years in time is nothing to a mountain, maybe more important to a bear. But the last two decades have been critical for the development of our scientific understanding of what makes nature tick. We have also deepened our comprehension of the reasons why we need to do more to protect the ecosystems that we call home. The trouble is, while we increasingly grasp the biology of thinking like a mountain, we still cannot manage to act, in Aldo Leopold’s famous phrase, as plain members and citizens of Earth.

When I wrote chapter two of Ghost Bears, I wanted to explore how humans, with their view of nature limited by a short-term, seventy-odd- year stay, might learn about the long run from Koma Kulshan, Mount Baker, the icy totem presiding over the greater North Cascades. I personified Koma Kulshan, rock and ice, giving the mountain eyes and a voice. What the mountain saw in 1992—the biodiversity crisis born of inadequate nature reserves, human overpopulation, nonsustainable resource consumption, . . . impending rapid climate change, and imperfect laws—is considerably more advanced today. Protected areas are increasingly segregated from their surroundings, the latest U.N. population data projects more people on the planet by 2050 than the numbers I used in Ghost Bears, and globalization in general and the rise of China’s consumer masses in particular have ratcheted all of us closer to resource limits. The only major change in my earlier narrative is that climate change is no longer impending, it is here.

To encourage general knowledge about biodiversity and to guide readers toward the realization that biodiversity is about much more than numbers of species, I portrayed Koma Kulshans’ key message as think big, think connected, think whole. And while we have gotten better at such thinking, we have yet to link our scientific knowledge with decisive conservation action on the ground. Our failures are manifest. Grizzlies in the North Cascades remain unlisted as a separate subpopulation under the Endangered Species Act. The law has never been updated since Ghost Bears was published, despite ample scientific evidence to do so. Climate change impacts, conservation linkages, insights from landscape and disturbance ecology—none of these are reflected in current law. In fact, every President since I wrote the book has attempted to weaken the Act; the most recent incursion came in March 2012 when the Obama Administration tried to narrow the definition of significant when defining range requirements for listed species.

Beyond species-level concerns, there has been particular scientific interest in how to design and manage protected areas in the face of ever-increasing habitat fragmentation across US landscapes. Conservation biologist David Theobald and coauthors recently located lands with high importance for connectivity and found that while about 15 percent of these places were already protected, 57 percent had no protection at all. Every conservation biologist recognizes the importance of linking protected areas into larger landscapes. Every course in every university now teaches the importance of connectivity and that is progress, but little of this science has found its way into federal or state policy. In U.S. biodiversity policy making, there appears to be an inverse relation between biological knowledge and the political will to act.

There have been some positive trends. The Clinton Administration’s 1994 Northwest Forest Plan dramatically lowered cut levels across federal timber lands in an effort to protect the Northern Spotted Owl. The cut has shrunk by billions of board feet reducing pressure on primary forests, the owl and a host of other old growth-dependent species. The economy in the Pacific Northwest has adjusted, though not without economic pain and frustration for some during the transition. But populations of the Northern Spotted Owl continue to decline at the alarming rate of about 4 percent a year due to a complex ecological combination of habitat fragmentation, reproductive stress, and the spread of the Barred Owl, a non-native predator. Despite great efforts, one of conservation biology’s policy implementation success stories may still not be enough to provide long-term viability to a creature that grabbed the headlines throughout the