Tuesday, August 2, 2016

The Natural Environment and the Foothill Conservancy

At the Amador Water Agency public discussion of the Amador Canal’s small diameter pipe, Cecily Smith read the Foothill Conservancy’s position on the project. Given its convoluted bureaucratic rhetoric, I was confused at times, but they seemed nominally in favor of the project. Upon reading the material on their website, it became clarified. The opposing points of view discussed there had uncovered a primary flaw in the dominant environmental dogma. The now 150+ years of the canal had spawned a new, desirable and natural environment. What, then, is the natural environment?

Many large forest preserves dot the northern suburbs of Chicago. For one reason or another, I have observed them for almost 40 years now. On my last visit, I witnessed rotting logs, dead limbs and half fallen trees. It seemed like an unsafe place to hike. A local told me of a change in policy to keep these woods in their natural state. That seemed like a strange assumption to me, since Native Americans would have been cleaning the forest for firewood, construction, tool making, etc. As I noted in one of my prior posts, the absurdity of New England environmentalists, proclaiming "Save This Natural River" when ground penetrating radar and similar techniques, reveal that the course of the river was determined by stone fishing weirs built thousands of years ago.

In the BLM land south of Chaw’se lies a blackberry patch. One year when I went to pick, the berries were sparse because a tree had fallen and blocked the creek’s flow. If a tribal group had been dependent upon that patch the tree would have been removed immediately. As I realized that likelihood, it also seemed likely that the bend in the creek which created that berry bog was also a human endeavor. Practices like this are called intentional agriculture. Hunter/gatherers didn’t wake up one morning and say: "This is getting boring, let’s become farmers." They observed how and where certain plants or animals flourished and customized the land and rivers for their convenience and survival. This has occurred for probably 500,000 years and possibly a million years. The aborigines in Australia had absolutely no concept of a park or preserve. But here in Amador County we have a so-called wild and scenic river created by dam release water flows on a river that has been artificially controlled for over a 150 years. Its natural summer condition is bone dry.

The Amazon basin is filled with “natural” groves of fruit and nut trees. To justify the current mythology of the Amazon, some scientists have published articles of twisted and convoluted logic to prove these groves natural, despite the first (and probably disease carrying) Spanish explorers describing a vast and thriving culture. Their arguments read as disgusting racism trying to prove that these “primitive” people were not capable of transforming their landscape to their advantage. It was a sophisticated and acceptable liberal academic version of KKK literature. Not only are these groves probably a vestige of a once elaborate human society, but some have hypothesized that much of the Amazon Basin was once a savannah forested by humans. While I have no idea if that is true, I feel certain that research money to investigate is unlikely to be available. But there is lobbying, deemed important enough for two and half pages in our local Ledger-Dispatch, to save the now naturally wild horses and burros descended from escaped or abandoned animals.

The Native Americans burned the forests to eliminate underbrush, etc and create a grassy environment to promulgate the desirable deer population. This practice amazed the first British settlers and gave birth to our current controlled burns. Many of our current forest preserves were farmed for over a 100 years before being turned into forests during the New Deal. And locally we have a 150 year old mining district being called pristine by the anti-Newman Ridge enthusiasts. The so-called natural environment developed in symbiosis with human habitation. The Bible giving us dominion over the land and other life forms was simply a codification of ancestral belief. Much of the official academic literature seems present centric and ethno-centric. The Ancients had technologies for remaking the earth often hard to grasp today, given our prejudicial blinders. They were as intelligent as we are, despite not walking around staring at iPhones. When I hear this prideful present attitude, I ask: How long did it take us to go from electricity to electronics?

The difference between then and now is simply a oneness with the land; people did not see themselves as separate from the wholeness of creation. Today’s common environmental belief is one of separation, that people are an unnatural, alien intrusion. This is an invented ideology that serves other purposes. I find it a bone chilling religion of self rejection, not unlike white guilt and other propagandized distortions prevalent today. It isn’t very holistic is it?

When you start with the wrong assumptions, you end up with the wrong conclusions. In 1962, Decca Records decided that guitar-based groups were passé (remember those great tenor sax choruses with The Coasters and other groups), and therefore refused to sign the Beatles. In 1948, the Pentagon added up planes, tanks, guns and bullets and told President Truman nascent Israel couldn’t defend itself. What army would you bet on: probable conscripts of feudal monarchies, or concentration camp survivors fighting for their own soil? When you conceive the situation incorrectly, the answers don’t work. We can’t get there that way, despite all of us caring about the earth.

PS: A similar situation seems to also exist with historic preservation. In the 1970’s the 20 th Century-Fox Ranch became Malibu Creek State Park. Great lengths were taken, which I wholeheartedly endorse, to preserve the remnants of Native American settlement. But the ruins of a Chinese village and other old movie sets were destroyed. Aren’t they both our history?

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

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