AS A ZOO GATHERS DIVERSITY OF THE ALIVE and a museum of the dead, mountains gather a diversity of nature. Across the earth’s flat lands habitats change incrementally, getting colder as distance increases from the equator. But when compared to the slow ecosystem change from the curve of the earth, temperature change in mountains is rapid. Ascend 1,000 feet, and the temperature typically drops by three degrees Fahrenheit (depending on the humidity).
As a young boy I noticed that flowers bloom at different times over the span of the 1,000-foot climb from Woodstock School to our home at the top of the hill. Then while in college in America I realized I did not need to go to New England to see vivid autumn colours; I could drive to the nearby Appalachian Mountains. I began to see that an aspect was missing in my biology textbooks. The textbooks said that the tropics was where life was most robust; a diversity of species created that strength—but it was clear to me that life was robust also but in a different way on the mountains as I climbed higher and higher.
Life at the bottom of mountains was robust in terms of the wealth of species found there, but life was also robust at mountaintops where fewer species lived. Life forms up high had a strong ability to endure harsh and always varying conditions. Both types of robustness were strengths, but the strengths were not the same. The wealth of species was what gave strength at the base of mountains with genetic diversity; diversity across many species gave strength. Though only a few species had the ability to deal with the fluctuating climatic diversity of mountain heights, those few were hardy. (Gentians that can burst through snow and still bloom show strength—most flowers lose their ability to bloom after freezing has begun.)
Moreover, temperature is not the only aspect that keeps changing in mountains; life forms higher up have to also adapt with regard to food, moisture, oxygen, and soil. Turning a ridge, the sun’s energy on a slope can decrease, maybe by as much as half. Change in moisture can be similar, as ridges dramatically change rainfall levels. Sun, moisture, oxygen, and soil, even the stability of the slope are in flux in mountains. Yet life not just survives, but thrives. Finding no terminology in the biological literature to explain this strength, I offer a new term: bioresilience, a term I introduced in 1995.3
Bioresilience is the ability of a species to adjust to change (whether related to temperature, moisture, sun’s energy, or soil) in the course of its life cycle. Species whose individuals can withstand great change have greater bioresilience. (Some species survive by mutating to new species for the new niche; other species have already mutated into hardiness and so they can survive a wide variety of life circumstances.) With biodiversity, it is the number of species, the genetic diversity, that creates a net with many strands back and forth giving strength to the life net. With bioresilience, however, a different strength is emphasized, which lies not in the number of strands but in the life strength of that particular genetic strand—the difference being between a net that is strong because of many fragile strands and a rope whose strength is in one strand.
Biodiversity has many species, each species filling one biological niche. Bioresilience has one species filling multiple niches, exemplifying its ability to cross econiches. Biodiversity’s strength comes from genetic complexity, multiple groups of DNA. Bioresilience’s strength comes from the ability of individual species with one DNA to accommodate changes in living conditions.
The climate needs to be stable to generate biodiversity, whereas the climate and other features fluctuate to promote bioresilience. Consider the adaptability life must have in mountains where temperatures can flip from freezing to near-boiling in one hour. (At higher elevations not only is there a more rapid build-up of heat from the sun passing through a thinner blanket of air, but boiling points are also lower due to decreased air pressure.) In the tropical world one season is much the same as months that came before and those following; due to this stability, life delicately evolves and fits tightly into niches.
Rising altitudes have a thinning blanket of air to buffer temperature change. So when the sun goes down (because plants cannot run indoors for shelter), in this fast temperature changing world not only must vascular systems empty fluids to prevent rupture from freezing, but in shutting down they must be poised to bounce back to maximize time when the sun’s energy returns, driving metabolism, respiration, and photosynthesis. And, in these shortened periods, for the continuity of a species, reproduction must not be disrupted. The ability to accommodate change is essential when the climate fluctuates. This creates for life forms the feature of bioresilience.
In bioresilience, the focus is on function. Gender differences lose their decoration. Food sources, which may be deprived for half the year, must harbour nutrients from the harsh world in roots and rhizomes, body fat, or underground caches (for example, to accommodate such needs some species minimize metabolism through reduced activity or hibernation). Bioresilient plants avoid the complex reproduction rituals found in the biodiverse tropics where some times plants prepare for reproduction a year before they procreate (for example, the high-altitude flower-bud primordia).
Robustness of each individual in bioresilience crosses a series of niches—this is achieved in biodiversity by multiple species where each species fills one niche. The diversity of species decreases as altitude is gained, but to accommodate this, the resilience of each species grows greater. Bioresilience is not better than biodiversity; the two strength aspects complement each other in life and suggesting one is better than the other overlooks how the complexity of life carries on in our living world. Without bioresilience, hardiness of life would be limited to a girdle around the planet.
Because we are a whole planet riding together, conservation management (that utilizes natural strengths to protect nature) will be strengthened by conserving bioresilient life in a complementing way as it has been focused on conserving the biodiverse life in recent decades. Valuing bioresilience may now be especially urgent. For in the world of the future, as climate system constancy is lost (somewhat analogous to the thinning of air as a mountain is climbed), hardiness of species might be the life aspect that will give the planet the ability to ride the macro change underway to regrow potential for all species, to position repositories of life that can sustain all life.
Now our planet irrefutably spins into an era of unpredictable eco-change. To keep our understanding of life (biology) current, the concepts we use to guide our response can evolve from what we have been using thus far. Conservation can hold a dual view—it is not an either/or between biodiversity and bioresilience, but from both may come a depth of understanding for life to carry on. This must not be viewed as a battle where the frontline is biodiversity protection—biology can expand to an understanding of creating flexing systems. While focus must certainly be on preparing pockets of protection (especially delicate life forms which are natural treasures), preservation will be wise to also include life with all the adaptive capacity it can muster.
Like the bounce of any ball, this world will not rebound from the forthcoming changes unless we engage the flexibility of our whole sphere. One way is with one species adapted to each niche—biodiversity. Another way is to have species that are able to cross multiple niches—bioresilience—fitting many conditions. We homo sapiens step into a new habitat in this new age we have created: the Anthropocene. The species we have often viewed as invasive may be links to bind together our world such that it is persuasive. And so, God bless those species that are everywhere: cockroaches, crows, zebra mussels, and yes, humans too.
8.3 Bioresilience and Biodiversity: Comparison of Attributes
Source: Author
The challenge then becomes about how to carry out this new vision. Nature preservation principles and practices must change. We must become resilient now in our management approaches. Conservation action is thus not a search for a lost wild man; rather, it leads us to the search for a new way for people to engage with the wild.
nine
Evidence Slipping Away
9.1 The View from Our West Virginia Mountain Home
Source: Michael Stranahan
December 1983. I had walked through these same glass doors in the summer of 1969, the C Street entrance of the US State Department, my first day with the US Foreign Service. I had been assigned to work on the ‘population problem’ in the Himalaya. In the fifteen years since, two billion more people ride the earth, a 40 per cent heavier load, adding a burden in such a short period greater than the planet had ever experienced, with each person believing he or she will gain a better life. World gross domestic product tripled from USD 800 per person to USD 2,600. Homo consumpticus1 pushed wilderness to near extinction worldwide.
Glass doors close behind me, they still have the delicate black borders that look haunting like lines that rim documents of bereavement. The security guard directs me to the elevators for those of us who are attending a state luncheon with the US vice president and the king of Nepal. Stepping to a corner to gather myself, an empty pocket tells me that my comb must have popped out just now when I was paying for the taxi. I’m sweating from chasing down that cab after an interview at the National Public Radio. Fortunately, in the interview Noah Adams didn’t ask, ‘Is your new bear the Yeti?’ I am holding the suitcase with the bear’s skull. Where can I put it? I wonder.
As I look for some place, through the glass door comes Lila Bishop, whose husband Barry was part of Hillary’s 1961 Yeti-hunting expedition; and in more recent years I’ve shared memorable climbs with him. ‘Dan’l, why are you lugging a suitcase to a vice-presidential lunch?’
‘Lila, where is yours? Mine holds one bear skull and two dried bear feet. Did you bring something for the king and the vice president … maybe yak cheese?’
Grabbing me by the elbow, she leads me to the elevator, where we stand at the back while I use her comb, and she straightens my bow tie. As the elevator doors open, Secretary of State George P. Shultz steps out of another door, followed by two aides. After some confusion at the name-tag table, the receptionist agrees, with a question about security with regard to bear paws at a vice-presidential reception, allowing me to stash the case behind her table. A harp plays as we step into another world, a string quartet accompanies, and gilded pictures embellish the walls.
Barry Bishop, the vice chair of the Committee on Research and Exploration at the National Geographic Society, comes over. ‘Congratulations. I read two days ago about your bear discovery in the New York Times.’
With pleasure, Lila tells him about the paws and skull behind the desk. Barry spots Russell Train, the president of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Train asks me to make an appointment to discuss the discovery. Meanwhile Barry is pressing me about my plans to follow this up. He reminds me that I’m not a biologist, that folks are going to connect my bear with the Yeti, and suggests that I must get a bear scientist.
Since I don’t want anyone at the National Geographic to link my specimens with the Yeti until I have proof, I push back. I tell him that with Bob the scientific aspect is under control—plus, Selenarctos thibetanus has never been scientifically studied, so there is no suitable bear expert.
The reception line moves closer to the vice president and His Majesty. The king quickly figures out what Barry and I were debating and wishes me good luck. The vice president nods quizzically. Barry continues to press the point that without a bear expert we will not be able to raise money as well as that article in the New York Times and the National Public Radio prove nothing.
I try to assure Barry that we shall collect both types of skulls, and to do that I’ll walk back and purchase both. Barry points out that nothing is so simple, and he is right. He cares, and I need his help. He and I have shared many uncomfortable nights in tents from the Arctic to the Himalaya. Barry offers to introduce me to John Craighead, noting that if either John or Frank Craighead participates, bear experts around the world will pay attention.
BACK IN WASHINGTON TWO MONTHS LATER, I walk into the WWF office. Russ Train welcomes me and introduces Curtis Freeze, a zoologist working on their Amazon project.
I explain what we found east of Everest and how Nepali villagers claim to have seen two types of bears: a small tree bear and a larger ground bear. The ground bear seems to be the known Asiatic black bear. But the tree-bear descriptions do not fit. It’s easy to discount these as stories, except that, as I open my little green case, I explain how the skull is uniformly smaller than Selenarctos skulls at the Smithsonian and New York’s American Museum.
As Train and Freeze inspect the skull, I explain how other reports from five places in Nepal also talk about tree and ground bears, adding the evidence of footprints and nests, evidence that complicates what is known about this Selenarctos thibetanus.
Freeze presses back, as in a legal cross-examination, pointing out that what we really have are stories, and stories do not prove hypotheses—indeed by my own admission our skull is not significantly different.
I explain that I’m not suggesting two species; there is no conclusion about that yet. But discrepancies such as my smaller skull require study, and to do good research I need money. Yes, there may be an opportunity to differentiate subspecies, but there are facts about unusual behaviours regardless of taxonomical findings.
Freeze presses further, asking about my qualifications, about whether I had ever previously worked with bears. I again explain my ideas of behaviour, of connecting different village reports. He then puts it bluntly: what I have raised are questions, and to answer these scientists who have worked on these questions are needed. As the meeting concludes, Train suggests that I send a funding proposal, reminding me that the WWF focuses on preserving endangered animals, not finding new ones.
With an hour still before my appointment at the Smithsonian, I sort out my thoughts over a too-expensive hot fudge sundae. I’ve now knocked on the doors of several major conservation organizations. Not one views the questions I’m asking as important. And because my skull matches Selenarctos, I lack a hypothesis with evidentiary support.
I stir the ice cream and fudge. Why are professionals not interested in this? These confident believers remind me of some missionaries I knew as a child, people who defend a faith but are not open to exploring in faith. Action about the environment now focuses on priorities in the courts, boycotts, or scientific papers, and do not enter the great mysteries of fieldwork. Fieldwork begins with untidy postulates that are hard to justify. (The word ‘Nature’ originates from a Latin word, natura, which means ‘conditions of birth’.)
That is Nature: untidy, the process of life coming forth. Thoreau was wrong—in wildness is not the preservation of the world for that omits the essential of preservation being in the way we live. And that, the way we live, is truly messy. The wild of Thoreau is no longer with us. Our behaviours have changed the wild—grasping that new positioning is understood by more than merely science, and what produces loss of the wild is separation from it. Instead of Thoreau’s end of living with Nature as a means to its preservation, wildness now is to be looked at rather than lived within, a separated world that gets joined when the lighting is perfect on TV, edited to show as often as possible males fighting, females nursing, or the two having sex. Through separation, wildness has been reduced to voyeurism, marked by a failure to remember that Nature is the process of life coming forth with ourselves in its womb.
I stir the chocolate and melting ice cream. Seeking to preserve wildness, we lock it off—though now it is actually impossible to lock off as people are everywhere. Wildness will be newly found again in recognizing that it is everywhere—as it always has been. It is in the process of going to it and learning from living it, as Thoreau did. Wildness is not on the fringes (a remnant valley in the extreme Himalaya) but in the openness of ourselves to the world … which perhaps was what Thoreau was also saying.
I am sitting by the Potomac River, and even here wildness can be engaged by people who stop at this river’s edge and step into life a little more, perhaps seeing a
fish dart, bringing wildness into their lives, a world they don’t control. The view that to enter the wild first requires wrapping in Patagonia and North Face clothing, and then getting on an aeroplane, this is really a going away, separation. Distance has been introduced, not very different from entering the wild by viewing through a glass screen, entering experience but under human control. Authentic wildness is found in choosing to walk home in the rain, embracing the absence of control and letting it soak into you. Wildness welcomes us whenever and wherever we want it.
I hurry across the Washington Mall, reminding myself that I am headed to the curator of mammals at the esteemed Smithsonian. I must let go of the ice cream and fudge in my thinking. Focus on the literature I’ve been finding. For example, no longer is my bear Selenarctos thibetanus. Recent DNA analysis placed the Asiatic black bear in the genus Ursus, where also live the grizzly bears, the North American black bear, and the polar bear. My bear is now Ursus thibetanus. Equally, the larger Ursidae family (that includes sun bears, sloth bears, spectacled bears, even giant pandas) is no longer related to the raccoon family. Thus, within Ursidae, my Ursus thibetanus is genetically closer to Ursus minimus,2 the proto bear of five million years ago. (Did the proto bear exist at the time when Homo sapiens was coming forth?) Ursus minimus was distinctive due to its small brain and big mouth, features that today characterize its most direct descendant, Ursus thibetanus, a bear by comparison to other modern bears with an elongated and strong jaw.3
Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery Page 16