Sacred Substance

If there is a sacred substance on this planet, one that is holy beyond all else, it is not a wafer of pressed bread or a cup of wine, it is water. For, without water, life on Earth (or anywhere else that we know of) is impossible.  Without water life would not have become. Without water life would not have evolved. And, without water life would not be. And yet, like many of our gods we have also consistently abused and crucified this sacred substance.  We have poured our bodily wastes into water since the beginning of collective life in towns and cities. In the name of that very suspect ’progress,’  we have emptied our industrial waste into the rivers and streams, and the arteries of polluted water have burst into flame.

 In Asia the extraction of groundwater for fish culture is causing subsidence of the land.  In the Middle East water wars brew among the increasingly arid sands. In Japan radioactive poisons flow into the waters of the Pacific Ocean. In southern Nevada, the progeny of organized crime have acquired the rights to every drop of water from springs and streams to feed the thirst of Las Vegas.  Even when all the springs are sucked dry, there still won’t be enough water and the tourists will have to learn to drink their own recycled piss. Our theologies teach us that it’s not a good idea to offend our gods and it surely is not a good idea to continue to offend water.  Water may not be the kind of god our many theologies have led us to expect but its continued abuse will inevitably lead to the kind of punishment  we are told our oddly antagonistic gods often impose.

What Mercy ? (II)

Continued from the previous posting.

Africa is no stranger to the sounds of automatic weapons fire and it is also no stranger to poaching.   Elephants are high on the list of those species slaughtered for profit and this continual massacre is prompted by the desire of some religious adherents to possess religious icons carved from elephant ivory.  

In 2012, the Religion and Conservation Research Collaborative of the Society for Conservation Biology turned its attention to this issue following an article in National Geographic by Bryan Christy titled Blood Ivory.  Christy places the responsibility for the slaughter at the door of Catholicism and Buddhism, in some parts of the world. It is the hope of the Advisory Committee of the Collaborative and others that some influence can be brought to bear on religion at the institutional stage to speak out to their co-religionists to help stop the use of ivory for religious icons and thus reduce the number of elephant who fall victim to the poacher AK-47.

Thinking of the gunshot, deflated, desiccating carcasses of these magnificent and highly intelligent creatures while religious adherents  moan and chant over their extracted molars makes for dark meditation and yet another sobering  indictment of religion.

For additional information on the use of poached ivory as religious icons and the subsequent impacts on elephants go to http://www.conbio.org/policy/scb-statement-on-the-use-of-ivory-for-religious-objects

(Unless otherwise noted images courtesy of Google Images)

What Mercy ? (I)

In July of 2007 I was given permission by the Board of Governors of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) to form an exploratory committee to look into the relationships between conservation and religion.  A handful of society members rapidly grew to several hundred and we were granted Working Group status by the SCB (http://www.conbio.org/groups/working-groups/religion-and-conservation-biology). Over the years the Working Group has involved itself in a number of tasks. Most recently those tasks have focused on a religious practice called mercy release and on the use of elephant ivory for religious objects.  I have served on the Advisory Committee for both efforts.

Fang sheng is a practice by Buddhists and Daoists for releasing captive wildlife as an act of compassion. According to SCB’s Religion and conservation Research collaborative, this type of animal release causes “…adverse effects on biodiversity including the spread of invasive species, genetic swamping, extreme animal suffering, competition, vulnerability to predation, disease, and human health concerns.”  The problem isn’t even very complex.  Animals are trapped with the usual high mortality, they are kept captive with the usual high mortality, they are inappropriately released (with the usual high mortality) with expectable impacts on existing wild populations.  All of this takes place in the name of mercy and some form of spiritual redemption.   Again, it doesn’t take great intellect to figure out that there is nothing good going on here…and not much mercy.  As usual, the animal traffickers involved in Fang shen are the only ones making  good on the deal.

For additional information on Fang sheng and SCB efforts to reduce the practice see http://www.conbio.org/science-policy/policy/religion-and-conservation-biology-working-group-policy-position-on-the-rele.

(Image courtesy of Buddhist Channel through Google Images.)

Continued in the next posting.

The Spirit of the Thing II

(Continued from the preceding post.)
What calls us here today?  Why do we gather?  What connections do we seek? 

To learn about plants?  Yes. To meet others interested in plants? Yes, that also.

But maybe something else?  Something more enveloping and inclusive…a more basic connection?

I think it may be the spirit of the thing.

What does it mean to speak of the spirit of something?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines spirit as a life-giving force…an animating principle…the essential or real meaning of something. In other words ‘spirit’ is the essence of something.

It is the spirit of the thing, the essential or real meaning of our connection with life that draws us here today. 

When Charles Darwin encountered his first tropical forest near Rio de Janerio in 1832 he spoke of experiencing, and I’m quoting him,  “…wonder, astonishment and sublime devotion…” Darwin sensed the spirit of those wonderful green mansions in which he stood.

The destruction of those green mansions has been compared by Darwin to “…burning a Renaissance painting…”  We have a lot of Renaissance paintings going up in smoke in the forests of this Earth...millions of acres every year.

Even in these mountains we can smell that smoke. Even with a growing awareness, we still have too much smoke. Our rivers and streams all too often run red with the soil of erosion. Our national, regional, and local conservation areas become increasingly surrounded with development .

It is a tough time for life on Earth. Colleagues of ours who study threats to species and habitats…who study extinctions…tell us that we are in one of the great extinctions of life on Earth.  Life has faced five major extinctions in its four billion years on Earth. The last extinction was caused by a meteor that inconveniently dropped in on us.

But the current extinction…the sixth extinction…is the only extinction caused by one species…by us…by humanity. 

The last time I was up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, I remembered a quote from William Bartram in which the great naturalist talked about his visit to the area around Franklin, North Carolina. Bartram said “…from the most elevated peak…I beheld with rapture and astonishment, a sublimely awe filled scene of power and magnificence, a world of mountains piled upon mountains.”  If we are here today it is very likely that we love these mountains. I really don’t know any other term to use. We have made our connection here. We sense the spirit of this place.

I’m sure most of us here have felt that awe.  We live in an incredibly beautiful and profoundly impressive part of the world with mountains piled upon mountains covered with layer after layer of the very plants we have come here to study.  Think of what we experience on almost any spring hike in these mountains.  Even during the worst of the drought years our springs trickled out from among the rocks and our diminished but still running streams. 

What may not be so obvious to many of us is that we live in one of the world’s more exciting laboratories of evolution. The creation of life is the heart and soul of these mountains and valleys…their essence, their spirit, if you will. In these coves and hollows and on these slopes unique, fascinating forms of life have evolved…have made those connections that we call natural communities. And we’re here today to make our connection with all of that.

We sense that we are part of this…part of the spirit of life on Earth and in these mountains.

The Spirit of the Thing I

Early In 2010 a number of North American native plant devotees gathered at the North Carolina State Arboretum in Asheville to spend some time considering the native vegetation of the Southern Appalachian Mountains.  I was asked to open the gathering with a reflection on the reason for our gathering.

I’ve been reflecting.

I’m old enough to do that now, you know…to reflect.

When you’re young they won’t let you reflect. You have to do, not reflect.  If you’re reflecting they think you’re lazy.  I never could get my parents to understand that. “Tom get up and mow that lawn,” my father would say. “But Dad, I’m reflecting.”  For some reason he didn’t buy it.

When you get older, you have to reflect because they won’t let you do.

But I’ve out-foxed ‘em because I not only still do, I reflect on my doing and on the doing of others.

And today I’m going to share some of those reflections.

As some of you know, I’m a biologist with specialization in ecology and a career in natural resource management and conservation biology. I’ve also been fortunate in doing additional graduate academic work and fieldwork in aspects of the humanities and social science. Because of my transdisciplinary background, my reflections often center on the life that we share this Earth with and on the ways in which we perceive that sharing.

My ecological training draws me to think about things in terms of connections…for example, how do plants and animals relate to and interact with each other and with the nonliving environment? That, by the way, is the basic question of ecology…that question of interaction…of connections…of interdependence.  Every species, our own included, is linked, directly or indirectly, with a multitude of others in a community of plants and animals and, genetically…with all life on Earth since the beginning.

What are some of these connections? How does some of this interdependence work out? Well…the plants that we are here to celebrate today …provide food, shelter, and nesting sites for other organisms. On the other hand, many plants depend upon animals for help in reproduction. Insects pollinate flowers and animals spread seeds and provide nutrients from their bodily wastes. Some species have become so adapted to each other that neither could survive well, if at all, without the other.

But the interaction of living organisms does not take place on a passive environmental stage. Ecosystems are shaped by the nonliving environment of land and water—solar radiation, rainfall, mineral concentrations, temperature, and topography. The world contains a wide diversity of these physical conditions that, in turn create a wide variety of environments: freshwater and oceanic, desert, grassland, tundra, and these beautiful forests and mountains that surround us with their rock outcrops, bogs, heaths, their cove forests and dozens and dozens of other habitats and communities.

(Continued in the next post.)