Sometimes big nature makes me nervous, and I am not alone. I have friends who've quaked while overlooking Ram Falls, others who nervously wondered where they were in vast woodlands, or fretted about getting back upstream if their outboard failed. Those are the worrisome downsides, but wild and uncertain settings also bring us fresh insights about ourselves and this big, exciting world we move through.
Wild country can be like Tabasco, spicing up the bland diet of life’s routines. The ruggedness of a place becomes an attractive feature—be it mountain mule deer country, frozen lakes harbouring big lake trout, vast bogs sheltering great grey owls, or eroded badlands propelling pronghorn from coulees. All of these settings and their wildlife deliver a gasp of appreciation for outdoorspeople.
We want these experiences to remain available and repeatable for subsequent generations, but there are challenges. In his seminal book A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold ominously wrote, "The oldest task in human history is to live on a piece of land without spoiling it."
For us to live, plants or animals must die. Humanity’s pattern, though, is to go further and pull as many marketable goods from our rich soils, dependable waters, and vast forested spaces as we can. This extensive extraction of natural resources without provision for their renewal occurs to varying degrees in every culture and seems innately human, but how do we determine how much is too much?
Historically, we may have been incapable of wholesale elimination beyond woolly mammoths and short-faced bears. Human exploitation and trade were limited by technology—furs, minerals, dried fish, pemmican, spices, and minerals could only be moved by hand or backpack—where one person equalled one load. Yet, technological force multipliers were added—horses quadrupled the load one person could carry, canoes gave an eightfold weight advantage, and wheeled wagons allowed a hundredfold transport advantage.
Things really took off when railroad lines roared across prairies, steamships plied the rivers, and ocean-sailing ships increased transport capacity more than ten thousandfold. They directly linked gold mines and buffalo plains to city markets around the world, funnelling our sprawling resources to distant, insatiable appetites. We often overreached with beaver, buffalo, sea otter, old growth forests, and gold.
Few humans had much sense of restraint, self-limitation, or awareness of sustainability. Most societies behaved like hungry dogs in a meat shop, and only now does their post-feast indigestion loom. There is cold comfort in knowing the same pattern of overuse played out in Scotland, Germany, Madagascar, South Africa, most Caribbean islands, the U.S., and India. Technology spurred overuse in traditional societies, Indigenous groups, colonists, invaders, and new arrivals. Things went slower in some areas with non-traversable wetlands, severe weather, or imposing mountains—but technology is now opening those too.
Maybe something is different now; technology has turned back on itself and informs us of the errors of previous development schemes. Philosopher Thomas Hobbes once wrote, "Hell is the truth learn’t too late." But maybe, just maybe, our models, historic examination, and AI will let us explore some logical limits in time to moderate our ways—at least in designated conservation areas.
Both ancient and modern ways of knowing advise that while building out our production systems, we should also maintain low-use zones, protective buffers, refugia, some untouched river basins, and examples of intact unroaded wild spaces. Alberta still has that planning opportunity.
Travellers to Germany should visit the famous Black Forest. This once ancient and diverse old-growth forest of oak, hemlock, and ash supported abundant boar, bear, red deer, wolves, capercaillie grouse, and sable. It was mostly cleared in the 19th century and replanted in rows of spruce monoculture for wood production. However, nature has had the last laugh. As those acidic spruce monocultures replaced the rich leaf humus of diverse forests, soil quality and biological diversity plummeted. Are there lessons there for our modern Canadian habit of monoculture tree planting with scant undisturbed areas?
Similarly, the craggy rock faces and slopes of Scotland once had tree cover over deeper soils, but clearing and incessant sheep grazing led to mass wasting of topsoil, which washed downhill and exposed the bare grey rock. Less than one percent of highland pine forests remain in Scotland—and soil erosion, rockslides, and streams choked with sediments have lowered land fertility and eliminated salmon habitat.
Canada has the opportunity to do better. Conservation organizations use "what if?" simulations of land use for planning how much wild land is needed and where it will do the most good. A generous scattering of wild lands within our use zones can completely change the distribution of species, public access to various habitats, and provide a recolonization source for everything from owls to elk to wildflower seeds.
A popular approach in the agriculture world is to "give a little bit back" in terms of unfarmed wetlands, woodlots, or fallow pastures. In the big woods of Alberta’s Green Zone, giving a little bit back may mean creating a network of light-use zones that hold their original non-monetary values. Alberta Conservation Association is already doing that, but we may need more of these light-use zones!
