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LEAVE A TRACE


AS ENVIRONMENTALISTS, WE NEED TO LEAVE THIS WOUNDED PLANET BETTER THAN WE FOUND
IT

Photo by iStock/andreswd

By Jason Mark

June 12, 2023



All you hikers and backpackers out there know the mantra for spending time in
wild nature: Take only memories and leave only footprints. At the individual or
family level, the "leave no trace" wilderness ethic is important wisdom. You
should leave the forest—or the desert or the seashore—just as you found it.

On a collective level, however, this time-tested ethos doesn't serve as well as
it once did. In the midst of the Anthropocene, or the Human Age, our industrial
civilization's environmental impacts are so sweeping that a leave-it-be policy
is no longer always sufficient to safeguard nature. Ecosystems will need the
helping hands of humans to thrive in this hot and chaotic century.

True, many landscapes can recover from the abuses of industry if they're given
the opportunity to heal. Forests regrow after logging, salmon have returned to
rivers once straightjacketed by dams, and beavers are recolonizing streams.
Simple human forbearance goes a long way toward helping nature heal.

Support the Sierra Club

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Monthly giving provides the resources to sustain long-term campaigns that
permanently protect our most precious resources.

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today.

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It's also true that as temperatures rise and weather patterns shift, some
ecosystems are struggling. This is the case in the Four Corners region, where
piñon-juniper woodlands are failing to regenerate after high-intensity
wildfires. As Krista Langlois reports in "Future Forests of America," in some
postfire landscapes, new piñons and junipers "simply aren't growing on their
own." In response, researchers and government agencies are experimenting with
replanting seedlings. It turns out that we may need to assist forests in
adapting to a more volatile climate.

Similarly, human intervention on the landscape will be necessary to help the
native flora and fauna of the West rebound from overgrazing by cattle and
free-roaming horses and burros. In "Beasts of Burden," Heather Hansman reports
that the number of wild horses has more than tripled since 2007. This "has led
to a calamity on the rangeland" as wild horses tear up native vegetation,
degrade riparian areas, and destroy fragile desert biocrust. It would be nice if
we could just let the wild horses stay wild. But Hansman concludes that, for the
sake of flora and feral horses alike, "managing ecosystem diversity takes
ongoing flexibility."

The prospect of having to replant forests to help them cope with climate change
and the necessity of managing wild-horse populations represent an evolution in
environmentalism. If 20th-century environmentalism was focused on conservation
and preservation, 21st-century environmentalism is increasingly centered on
restoration and revival.

This doesn't mean giving up on the ideal of wildness, which has long been the
beating heart of efforts to protect the living world. Some places, like
designated wilderness, should remain landscapes for evolution to occur without
deliberate human intervention. At the same time, we should recognize that a
human touch can sometimes foster wildness. Think of the recovery of the
California condor. Think of gray wolves, which have spread across the western
United States since the species' reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park
more than 25 years ago. It's all part of the work of refashioning old values for
new times.

The most exciting thing about the pivot from conservation to restoration is that
while the former is (mostly) passive, the latter is active. Conservation draws
lines on a map to keep out the bulldozers and chainsaws; rewilding is about
coloring those lines in. Ecological recovery will take a lot of work—and that's
a good thing. Just as we'll need people to manufacture solar panels and get them
onto roofs, we'll need people to help replant burned forests, restore stream
banks, and rewild the range.

This effort of ecological repair can be the labor of millions, the work of a
generation. Our task today is not simply to leave no trace, but rather to make a
virtuous mark and ensure that we leave this wounded planet better than we found
it.
__________________

Jason Mark is the editor of Sierra and the author of Satellites in the High
Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man. Follow him on Twitter
@jasondovemark.

More articles by this author
 * Keywords:
 * climate change


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