by Megan McKeown, of University of Vermont
How have your views on conservation and wilderness changed through the semester?
A question asked to Round River students at the end of the semester to conclude our studies in conservation, and to see how views have changed.
My initial thoughts on conservation were very limited before coming to Costa Rica. I knew I was attending a conservation studies program, but strangely enough, didn’t put a ton of thought into the conservation part. It was more of a buzz word i’ve heard over and over in my 3 years of environmental studies education, but no one ever asked me to define it or state my views. I had always felt that conservation was important to protect the biodiversity that we are so rapidly loosing but in my mind it was more preservation than the dynamic practice I learned it to be.
In working with people who do real conservation work, and participating in the research that is required to conserve an area, I learned what conservation work really is. Conservation is anthropocentric. Conservation is researching not only the jaguars, but the dung beetles. Conservation requires opinions, policy change, listening to local people, and understanding the environment and its complexities. One concept I remember changing my view on conservation was “alternative stable states”. An alternative stable state is the state of an ecosystem after being degraded. This environment may be a deforested plot of cattle grazing land viewed by many as a broken ecosystem from years of logging, grazing and maybe pesticide use. In reality, this ecosystem is still dynamic. The life and diversity did not die with the trees. Now it is just harder to see. There are species of grasses, spiders, grasshoppers, and bugs all living in this deforested plot. Even the soil is full of life! Planting native trees and waiting 100 years would not bring the ecosystem back to its former glory. There are new internal feedbacks that this land is functioning within and these deeper dynamics need to be understood in order to change it from its alternative stable state. Bringing back the trees would most likely increase biodiversity over time, but it is much more complex then just planting trees to build a new forest, and that is why conservation and research is important.
Wilderness is another concept I learned a deeper meaning of during my semester with Round River. Before coming here I spent hours in awe of National Geographic Planet Earth episodes showing all the “untouched” beauty and biodiversity Costa Rica holds. In my mind the jungles were dense, sprawling and pristine. The Osa Peninsula, named “the most biologically intense place on earth”, is where I started to come to the realization of what wilderness really means. The Rincón bridge where we surveyed for the endangered and endemic yellow-billed cotinga was a busy, paved, main road. This bridge is known to be one of the most species rich places for birds in the world, yet motorcycles, trucks and coach busses zip by all day. For the yellow-billed cotinga this is their wilderness. Any place where life is happening can be wilderness.
In one of our classes we discussed and read about the “pristine land” myth. Our discussion was passionate and fueled by this myth, and our previous perceptions and experiences with “pristine land”. There is no such thing as pristine land. Land has been impacted by people for hundreds of years. Indigenous people lived on the land that is now Corcovado National Park. The impacts of global warming are even changing the most secluded places on Earth. Saying that a national park is natural wilderness erases the history of the native people forced to leave their land. Within these national parks and protected areas poachers are killing off the remaining jaguar population and loggers are illegally cutting down primary forest trees. The concept of wilderness hosting an abundance of life is still alive and well – as we saw of the Rincón bridge, rich with bird species – but anthropogenic impacts are present and growing. The myth of untouched wilderness romanticizes land. The beauty of the jungle and the human impacts on it are both very real, seeing one without the other compromises our ability to protect it for future generations to experience.