Might we have a conversation about the ecology of the earth without a single murmur about global warming? My apologies for mentioning it. The daily weather news teams lack imagination and so rely upon “unprecedented” and “historic” floods, heatwaves, droughts, to keep us in a state of perpetual anxiety. (Global warming wasn’t mentioned once in that last sentence — vindicate me).
I prefer to steer your attention to something else entirely, not particularly unprecedented or historic: rewilding. The word is self-explanatory. The Global Rewilding Alliance has a sutra-like definition: “helping nature heal.” We can argue endlessly about the other term — which I won’t utter — but “helping nature heal” … who can be offended or threatened by that? I felt immediate sympathy with one rewilder who tamely pronounced that “we need to take our foot off of Mother Nature’s throat.”
Vicente Saisó, vice president of sustainability for Cemex, the world’s third-largest cement maker, also wants in on some rewilding redemption in the form of a significant rewilding project in northern Mexico. The corporation purchased 346,000 acres of land in desperate need of healing. They got rid of the so-called concrete improvements — the dams, dykes and culverts — and allowed the water to return to its natural flows. That was more than two decades ago. What had been barren is now the El Carmen Nature Reserve, a grassland savannah with forests that are taking shape. And the mammals are back and plentiful, most notably pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep and hundreds of bison.
Why lament over how the cement production process contributes to you-know-what? They are doing good works; Mama Nature has one less cement slab on her throat.
Does the biosphere really need any more guilt-cleansing gimmicks like carbon credits or eco-tours catering to the urban elite? We do appreciate that they need to have their fun while resting peacefully at night. Yet there is a distance and an imposed comfort in their energy-sapping enclaves that mask the real costs. The externalities, as economists call them. The rewilding movement boldly accounts for those injuries, and in so doing reopens doors to the magic of nature as Ben Goldsmith, author of “God is an Octopus,” described, “the importance of re-inserting ourselves back into the miracle of the world.”
If nothing else, rewilding is about creating the conditions for the ecosystem to restore itself. In northern Montana, the American Prairie Project looks to do just that. They are rewilding more than a million acres of prairie with thousands of bison, pronghorn, elk, deer, grizzly bears and wolves. Once upon a time, the American prairie was a roiling sea of bison, perhaps as many as 60 million. The project's aim is restoring more than 3 million acres, an area comparable to Africa’s Serengeti. They are buying up ranches, 34 to date, and taking down the fences. Mixed grasses are emerging.
The restoration of abundance and species diversity. I don’t consider that anything less than divine stewardship. We step aside, get out of the way, listen. In that sense, we rewild ourselves in the bargain.
“We are healing deep wounds and rebuilding trust,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said, formally announcing the return of 2,800 acres of ancestral land to the Shasta Indian Nation.
As part of this healing, the Klamath River Dam will be removed, and with its removal, 300 miles of salmon habitat restored. That Gov. Newsom emphasized this was just a “down payment” to the enormity of the rewilding task ahead of us. Subsumed in taking our feet off of Mother Nature’s throat is taking our hands off of Indigenous people’s throats. We would choke the life out of a people whose value system is to live in harmony with nature and then proudly call it dominion.
Rather than have our attention seized by the myopic lens of unprecedented weather events, we now must face a fuller frame and take in what surrounds us: the unprecedented dumping ground of dominion. Created with a mixture of good intentions and a peculiar madness called progress. Time for another form of madness to dominate: rewilding.
After years of globetrotting, Broadman finds himself writing from his perch on the Palouse and loving the view. His policy briefs can be found at US Renew News: https://www.usrenewnews.org.
