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AS I WRITE THIS, THE RAIN IS COMING DOWN in a day-long drizzle, providing welcome moisture for the forest but hard on impatient humans like me who want to go outside.
Even some of the wildlife is taking shelter. I looked out the window to see the raven who visits us regularly perched on a table under the porch roof. First, he shook himself like a dog, spraying drops, then started grooming his wet feathers. Now he just sits there looking stoic and waiting out the rain.
We don’t often talk about how wild creatures manage in prolonged storms, fires, or harsh human crises. But just as humans suffer, so do other forms of life.
The NY Times article below discusses how birds and nature are faring in Ukraine this month.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/science/war-environmental-impact-ukraine.html
It turns out that Ukraine is “an ecological transition zone… home to vibrant wetlands and forests and a large swath of virgin steppe.” The Black Sea Biosphere Reserve hosts migrating birds, including rare species such as the white-tailed eagle, red-breasted merganser, and black-winged stilt. It’s also home to Black Sea bottlenose dolphins and dozens of other species such as mollusks, fish, small mammals, and rare flowers.
Russian troops have now overrun parts of this reserve, and local environmentalists fear nesting birds have been displaced or harmed, leading to more vulnerable animals and ecosystems.
Across the country, nature feels the burden of human conflict and war. Invading troops have set fires in Ukraine that were large enough to be seen from space.
Russian troops have already entered, or conducted military operations in, more than one-third of the nation’s protected natural areas.”
Reports from the ground, and research on previous armed conflicts, suggest that the ecological impact of the conflict could be profound. Wars destroy habitats, kill wildlife, generate pollution, and remake ecosystems entirely, with consequences that ripple through the decades.
N.Y. Times, A “Silent Victim”: How Nature Becomes a Casualty of War, by Emily Anthes
The more conflict and war we have, the more wildlife dies off and populations shrink.
During Mozambique’s civil war, which lasted from 1977 to 1992, the population densities of nine large herbivores — including elephants, zebras, hippopotamuses, and buffaloes — declined by more than 90 percent in Gorongosa National Park.”
N.Y. Times, A “Silent Victim”: How Nature Becomes a Casualty of War, by Emily Anthes
The accidental rewilding experiment
Paradoxically, sometimes conflicts or disasters help nature out, such as when a region becomes unsafe or uncertain for humans to occupy, giving wildlife a chance to recover.
One example is a large area around the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl (in Ukraine), where the world’s most damaging nuclear accident happened in 1986.
Researchers have found the land surrounding the plant, which has been largely off-limits to humans for three decades, has become a haven for wildlife, with lynx, bison, deer, and other animals roaming through thick forests. This so-called Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), which covers 2,800 square km of northern Ukraine, now represents the third-largest nature reserve in mainland Europe and has become an iconic—if accidental— experiment in rewilding.”
How Chernobyl Has Become an Unexpected Haven for Wildlife
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife
In recent weeks, even that still-radioactive area has seen some human occupation by Russian troops, but a recent pullout could help wildlife regain their foothold. Ideally, wildlife needs safe and relatively undisturbed habitat rather than contaminated human lands.
Built-in resilience
The message we need to remember is that nature is resilient and tenacious. It’s been around for hundreds of millions of years, and given half a chance, it can come back and even flourish.
In the Amazon rainforest, areas cleared for cattle grazing are often abandoned after a few years when the soil won’t support continued grazing. In these abandoned clearings, the forest regenerates itself after a few decades. We just need to get out of the way or help it along.
Whatever we do to support the natural world now— creating more preserves and wildlife corridors, volunteering for conservation projects, monitoring and standing up for wildlife, even removing trash and invasive plants— helps build a stronger, more resilient future for all of life.
We can also do our part to avoid war and its many damages by lessening conflicts locally, regionally, and nationally. Minor disagreements can lead to larger ones, so efforts to defuse tensions, understand what causes them, and redress wrongs are crucial.
In our progress towards a more just and equitable world, we also lessen the chance of war and its vast destruction that can span decades.
The seeds of war can sprout anywhere, not just in far-off countries. A bitter conflict happened inside the U.S. during the Civil War, where I had ancestors fighting on both sides—North and South. It took Civil War casualties and 85 more years for descendants of those ancestors to move west and peacefully unite into the family I have today.
If we want to help fellow humans and wild species, efforts to promote peace and save wild places are a good start.
“The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask.”
Nancy Newhall
Happy Earth Week 2022!
Read a short poem, The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry
I appreciate reader comments. You can leave a public comment above, reach me privately by responding to this email, or on Twitter @RobinApplegarth
Robin A.