If only it’s willing to shift itself
By Todd Wilkinson EBS ENVIRONMENTAL COLUMNIST
What is environmental advocacy?
This summer I’ve been having lively
discussions about the meaning of it with “Mountain Journal’s” college intern who is here in Bozeman with
us from Whitman College for a few months.
I’ve asked him to reflect upon and explore
this question: Is simply partaking in an activity an act of conservation?
Can a person, for instance, who hikes into the
Greater Yellowstone backcountry claim that, simply by moving one’s legs, it is
doing something positive for the place we are exploring? Yes, think about the
proposition, because it’s a belief some people have.
Can trail building be counted as an act of
conservation? Are we being conservationists and promoters of water quality when
we wet a dry fly on the river? Are we confronting and registering our concern
about climate change when we downhill ski?
Are we doing something brave for the
environment by “liking” a story on Facebook?
Such inquires can be extended to any outdoor
activity. It all comes down, of course, to identifying what exactly we are
trying to conserve.
The late Jackson Hole conservationist Mardy
Murie, in the very first discussion I ever had with her as a 24-year-old
journalist in 1986, told me this on her cabin’s front porch in Moose, Wyoming. She
said conservation is about protecting rare things against being overrun by
common thoughtless things; it’s not about focusing purely on what benefits us
but what perpetuates the things in nature that give us inspiration or which
cannot advocate for themselves, such as an animal or a river.
Conservation, she noted, is about being
willing to take a risk, to advance a right cause that might be unpopular. For
Murie, wildness in Greater Yellowstone and Alaska meant people not imposing
their immediate needs upon the needs of other creatures that live there.
Amid these three years of the Trump
Administration, public-land-loving Americans and those who cherish public
wildlife and support having tough environmental laws on the books, have been
left reeling by actions taken by the President and his advisors.
Citizens want to do something in response, but
what? At the same time, the outdoor recreation industry—of which all of us are
connected in our role as consumers of stuff—has claimed that getting more
people venturing into wild places will result in better landscape protection
and help repel destructive policies.
But how? Outdoor recreation annually generates
$887 billion in economic activity in the U.S., but how does the industry directly
benefit a grizzly bear?
Besides getting itself into hot water with
those demanding that the American conservation movement become more
representative and respectful of non-white people, organizers of the Jackson
Hole SHIFT conference continue to pedal a mantra. It is one SHIFT still refuses
to reflect upon in any meaningful way.
SHIFT’s slogan is “where conservation meets
adventure.” Yet so far, in its brief history and with tourism promoters being
one of its main funders, SHIFT continues to push the idea that more human use
of wild places will generate conservation dividends.
Again, how does this work? How does building
more mountain biking and e-bike trails result in wildlife habitat or better the
prospects for, say, protection of wildlife migration corridors? How would the
pushes made by Jackson Hole packrafters to overturn a river boating ban in
Yellowstone have contributed to better conservation in America’s oldest
national park?
This year, SHIFT is again trumpeting the
blatantly-obvious fact that spending more time in nature is good for our
health. Not long ago, I reached out to SHIFT and suggested they feature
sessions helping attendees know what actions they might take for protecting the
health of wild places.
SHIFT, obviously well-intended, has the
potential to move forward the public conversation about conservation in Greater
Yellowstone. I know this is going to sound harsh but so far, the festival has
only really been about white recreationists pushing to open more parts of the
still-wild backcountry to their own activities and asking the ethnic and gender
diversity movement, which feels tokenized, to give them cover.
What’s missing? Plenty, actually, including
promoting ecological literacy and, as indigenous people say, respect for diversity
of all life forms.
I remember having a chat with SHIFT organizers
a few years ago and they were utterly unaware of the history of public lands in
our region and why specific environmental laws were enacted. They had little
knowledge of previous conservation battles that had been waged and how
advocates set aside their own self-interest to instead safeguard lands and
wildlife diversity they might never see or be able to exploit.
No one needs permission from someone else to
care about the natural world. No one needs approval to become an advocate for
nature’s protection. That power resides in each one of us, not because of our
racial or gender identity or political party affiliation, or because we’re a
dues-paying member of an environmental organization or hunting and fishing
group, or because a person flies across the country to attend the SHIFT
conference.
Conservation, Murie once told me, is about
being able to self-reflect on what one is willing to give up. Without bold acts
of conservation taken by previous generations, we wouldn’t be referencing “the
Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem” today as a globally-extraordinary region. Without
new bold acts of conservation being adopted now, we may lose the natural
qualities that still make Greater Yellowstone uncommon.
SHIFT has done little to take the ethical introspection
of Mardy Murie to heart. Without really confronting these tough questions, then
why does it exist?
Todd Wilkinson is the founder of Bozeman-based “Mountain Journal” (mountainjournal.org) and is a correspondent for “National Geographic.” He’s also the author of “Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek” about famous Jackson Hole grizzly bear 399, which is available at mangelsen.com/grizzly.
