The Paradigm Shift From Wildlife Conservation to Ecological Civilization
There is something fatally wrong with the way humans have gone about protecting our home planet over the last several decades. This flawed approach is reflected in the distressing, exponential decline in the diversity of plants and animals that defines our notions of life on planet Earth, featuring prominently in our shared creation stories, myths, and children’s literature. What it means to be human(e), in other words.
More than 1 million species, or one out of eight, are now threatened with extinction. What would it mean to be human in a world without giraffes, rhinos, gorillas or frogs? When was the last time YOU saw a frog, turtle, or salamander in the ecosystem YOU inhabit?
Consider the breakdown in sheer biomass of mammals by weight: livestock now comprise a 60% share; humans comprise 36%; and, wildlife make up only 4%. The reason wildlife populations have plummeted by 70% since 1970 is because the exponential growth in human population has been accompanied by exponential growth in domestic cattle, which have crowded out wildlife habitat, including rainforests and grasslands, grazing over a quarter of the planets arable land, and requiring another third of the terrestrial Earth for feed crops.
This week and for the next two weeks, governments from most of the world’s nations are meeting in Montreal at “COP15” ~ the U.N. Biodiversity Conference ~ to adopt a plan to reverse this crisis.
You might recall that “COP27” just concluded in Egypt, and may even be feeling some “COP-fatigue.” This planet-saving never seems to end!
But make no mistake, the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis are not separate existential threats, and to think one is more important or more urgent than the other is to miss half the picture, at least.
The temperature limits set by the Paris Agreement will not be achieved without protecting every intact ecosystem, restoring what has already been depleted, and allowing nature and Nature-based Solutions to do their part. IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Open Letter.
That’s not how most people think of the climate crisis, though, is it? And how people think about these crises shares a lot with the thinking that got us into this existential mess in the first place.
These twin-crises, viewed holistically, represent the living planet’s demand that we humans reconsider and re-set our relationship with the natural world. And as the U.N. clearly recognizes, we can turn to Indigenous knowledge and wisdom for answers to the question “how, then, shall we live?”
That’s based on an undeniable binary. “Indigenous peoples and local communities protect 80% of existing biodiversity, often by defending it with their lives,” according to Isaac Rojas, a program coordinator for Friends of the Earth International. “Conserving biodiversity goes along with taking [Indigenous cultures] and their human and land tenure rights seriously.”
On the eve of the UN Biodiversity Conference of Parties in Montreal, the UN’s environment chief, Inger Andersen, framed the issue starkly as one of profound paradigm change:
“As far as biodiversity is concerned, we are at war with nature. We need to make peace with nature. Because nature is what sustains everything on Earth … the science is unequivocal.”
Man vs. Nature, right? It’s no coincidence here that these are women’s voices attempting to lead us out of modernity’s darkness.
“Our planet is in crisis,” added Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the head of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Mrema emphasized that a global agreement on biodiversity is “crucial to ensure that the future of humankind on planet Earth is sustained”.
Wildlife Conservation or Ecosystem Restoration?
According to the leading science on reversing biodiversity trends, which is informing the UN’s approach, the key to our survival will be supporting and restoring “large mammal assemblages” in 30% of the planet’s ecosystems by 2030, and 50% by 2050. As Vynne et al. (2022) shows:
Assemblages of large mammal species play a disproportionate role in the structure and composition of natural habitats. Loss of these assemblages destabilizes natural systems, while their recovery can restore ecological integrity.
Humans have significantly altered 75% of the terrestrial ecosystems, so attaining the first 30% of the 30/30 goal is a matter of setting aside and shoring up protections for existing intact ecosystems (terrestrial and marine). While the U.S. is still unconscionably absent from the Biodiversity Conventions, the Biden administration has made 30/30 a focal commitment of its climate agenda.
The bridge from 2030 to 2050, by contrast, involves restoring degraded ecosystems where humans have constrained large mammal assemblages in favor of livestock and monocultural croplands. One of every five endangered species in North America became threatened because of our unholy relationship with McCattle.
At the same time, native grasslands trampled by cows and plows now represent the largest potential for achieving the kind of restoration needed to draw CO2 down from the atmosphere into the soil horizon, along with mangroves and kelp forests. It’s difficult for Americans hooked on the series “Yellowstone” to wrap their enculturated minds around, but here is the scientific truth:
There are still approximately 500 million acres of these grasslands which, if restored ecologically, could draw down twice as much CO2 annually as currently emitted by the U.S., the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer.
The “large mammal assemblage” identified by biodiversity science for the U.S. to do its part, one of 20 such key mammals worldwide that could cumulatively solve our crisis, is none other than our National Mammal: Yellowstone’s wild buffalo (Vynne et al., Table 1). In a timely demonstration of its ignorance, Montana’s Department of Livestock recently asserted in a public meeting with the National Park Service, the Forest Service and Tribal Nations that there is no science to support increasing Yellowstone’s wild herds of bison!
The very livestock interests that are glamorized in the series Yellowstone, and by the Cowboy Myth, are unhappy that the population of wild bison in Yellowstone, the remnants of 60 million buffalo, has been permitted to increase to 6,000. While Montana is calling for a return to annual slaughters, which echo the twin traumas of genocide and ecocide, the Tribes — supported by both the Park Service and the Forest Service — are calling for bison to be permitted to re-inhabit the larger Yellowstone ecosystem (primarily National Forest lands).
Bison are “ecosystem engineers,” like beavers and mountain lions, whose interactions with other plants and animals profoundly influence the structure and function of their habitats and the wildlife therein. As Yellowstone’s lead biologist puts it, based on a decade-long study, “bison are not just moving to find the best food; they are creating the best food by how they move” across the land.
By learning to co-inhabit with, rather than displace, wildlife keystone species, humans can re-set our relationship with the larger natural world. By humbly restoring nature’s balance in our home bioregions and in the oceans, we can stem the tide of global extinctions while at the same time literally reversing global warming. It’s almost too good to be true, when you think about it deeply. And restoring the American Buffalo to much of its historic range also permits us the opportunity to heal much of the unresolved trauma the Cowboy myth is designed to repress.
It’s a win/win/win proposition — the Half Earth Model of recovery popularized by the great American naturalist and scientist E.O. Wilson.
The delegates at COP15 are embarking on the final stage of negotiations on a new global biodiversity agreement. Raising the ambition needed to achieve its goals will be possible only by recognizing that species and ecosystem approaches are inextricably intertwined. In today’s world, landscape-level conservation alone is not sufficient to halt extinctions. We need to scale our conservation efforts up to ecosystem-wide strategies, and supporting Yellowstone’s buffalo in the entire Yellowstone Ecosystem, rather than just the 15% that comprises Yellowstone National Park, is a no-brainer. All it requires is respecting wild buffalo with the same conservation ethic we extend to other species that migrate out of the Park every year — including the elk and pronghorn antelope that bison co-evolved with.
At a time when the world gathers to solve the biodiversity crisis, let’s not forget the power of wildlife species to bring us together. Charismatic megafauna like the American Buffalo have boundless appeal and cultural significance, not just for the Tribes — though it’s undoubtedly greatest for the Tribes — but for billions of people worldwide. A focus on recovering wild bison in Yellowstone, in the C.M. Russell Wildlife Preserve, connecting them to the National Bison Reserve (by removing fences), buying out willing ranchers while other ranchers convert to raising domesticated bison, and finally establishing a “buffalo commons” stretching from Canada to Mexico, as envisioned by the Buffalo Treaty, can help to rally the ambition needed to halt extinctions, restore biodiversity, reverse the climate crisis, and fundamentally reshape our relationship with nature. The American Buffalo can become a powerful symbol of America’s resolve to tackle our existential crises, as well as set a strong foundation for the kinds of reparations that will empower Indigenous Americans to recover and restore the culture we robbed them of when we wiped out tens of millions of their relatives — the buffalo.
As the Buffalo Treaty states:
It is our collective intention to recognize BUFFALO as a wild free-ranging animal and as an important part of the ecological system; to provide a safe space and environment across our historic homelands, on both sides of the United States and the Canadian border, so together WE can have our brother, the BUFFALO, lead us in nurturing our land, plants and other animals to once again realize THE BUFFALO WAYS for our future generations.
All of us would benefit from this radical re-animation through rewilding of the American Dream. And we could finally put the Cowboy myth (a cover story for traumatized Civil war survivors) to rest.
According to Vynne et al.:
“The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration provides a global policy framework to integrate a rewilding component into habitat recovery. This refinement requires that the resurgence of large mammal populations becomes an explicit target.”
How about 6 million buffalo as an ‘explicit target’? It just might be enough to save us from our past and from ourselves.
As the authors of “REWILDING: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery” (2022) put it, we now have “the opportunity to be the first generation in human history to leave nature in a better place than we found it.”
As staunch allies of both Tribes and wild Yellowstone bison, Buffalo Field Campaign is determined to make good on that unfulfilled promise.
