Aldo Leopold, Wise Words And Something To Contemplate

[redneck_billcollector]

Wolves and Deforestation

Thinking Like a Mountain

By Aldo Leopold


A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world. Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call. To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.

Those unable to decipher the hidden meaning know nevertheless that it is there, for it is felt in all wolf country, and distinguishes that country from all other land. It tingles in the spine of all who hear wolves by night, or who scan their tracks by day. Even without sight or sound of wolf, it is implicit in a hundred small events: the midnight whinny of a pack horse, the rattle of rolling rocks, the bound of a fleeing deer, the way shadows lie under the spruces. Only the ineducable tyro can fail to sense the presence or absence of wolves, or the fact that mountains have a secret opinion about them.

My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes - something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf's job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.


We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.

I must be suffering from DeJa'Vu because I have a feeling in my gut, I have seen this somewhere else today. You know my thoughts intimately on this subject so no need to respond here. BTW, if you are serious about the trip next fall, odds are we might just hear some wolves a howling on a cool fall evening. Lots of wolves in the area, actually probably more than any western state.

 

[Tight Lines]

Were you to read the various diaries from the Lewis and Clark expedition, you would know that the prairies often had huge beaver swamps, in some areas it appears that the streams were basically nothing more that a string of beaver swamps as far as the eye could see. They are actually trying to get them back on the plains in many places to mitigate drought, not to mention, in western Kansas the Ogalala aquifer is running low and with all the playas plowed up, there is little ground water recharge and beaver swamps do a great job. Beavers are a victim of what many biologists are calling "ecological amnesia" because so few people saw the wilderness as it truly was, they have no idea of how it should be. The Cottonwood evolved with beaver, they actually do better with beaver and have evolved to sprout new trees and new growth when beaver have coppiced them or cut them down, willow and aspen are the same way, they actually do better with beaver feeding on them. You want water in areas of low precipitation, get beavers and keep cattle out of riparian zones.

I get it, and I know you are right...I also know it's hard for a landowner who has 100+ year old cottonwoods where there are not many trees to begin with to allow beavers to take hold...not that it's right...most of the trees have been cut right up to the banks to allow for either farming or grazing...and the landowners don't want any more trees to come down. The beaver ponds were replaced with reservoirs in KS and many a stream is dry as a bone now...

We have a dam on our lease, and it has been great for ducks and unfortunately hogs, but it is now flooded year around...hope it stays that way...we have no plan to blow the dam...

My favorite high mountain streams have been strings of beaver ponds or high mountain canyons...

Most of what we touch we mess up, rarely do we make it better...Mother Nature knows what to do and how to do it...man, not so much...

 

[redneck_billcollector]

I get it, and I know you are right...I also know it's hard for a landowner who has 100+ year old cottonwoods where there are not many trees to begin with to allow beavers to take hold...not that it's right...most of the trees have been cut right up to the banks to allow for either farming or grazing...and the landowners don't want any more trees to come down. The beaver ponds were replaced with reservoirs in KS and many a stream is dry as a bone now...

We have a dam on our lease, and it has been great for ducks and unfortunately hogs, but it is now flooded year around...hope it stays that way...we have no plan to blow the dam...

My favorite high mountain streams have been strings of beaver ponds or high mountain canyons...

Most of what we touch we mess up, rarely do we make it better...Mother Nature knows what to do and how to do it...man, not so much...

Fortunately, many ranchers are now learning about how important riparian areas are, and the BLM is making them learn if they want to have a grazing lease. Most, if not all, intermittent streams and a few ephemeral streams on the plains would be perineal but for the lack of beavers. incised streams are the norm on much of the prairies now, and sadly they are all a result of no beavers and grazing the riparian zone. I do believe, from reading the various journals and diaries from the Lewis and Clark expedition, pretty much every stream on the plains at the dawn of the 19th century were braided and had huge flood plains with huge stands of cottonwoods and the spring floods spread out upon the prairie and produced lush pastures....but alas, since the prairies in reality are not optimal cattle production areas (compare how many momma cow units I can keep on 100 acres in sowga to what can be kept acreage wise on the high plains) and you will see what I mean. It takes thousands of acres along with huge amounts of winter feed, to keep the numbers I can keep year-round on 100 acres in GA. Having spent a lot of time in pretty much every western state that has grazing leases on public land, I wish the government would stop subsidizing agriculture in areas that truly are not optimal for agriculture. Before long irrigation farming will be a thing of the past out west (you have to have cheap, readily available water to irrigate) and when that goes, so does the grain subsidies out that way ending the western feeder lots and it will simply be too expensive to raise cattle in many western areas outside of the mountain areas.