Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery

by Daniel C Taylor

  Tirtha unfolds newspaper pages while organizing leaves. ‘The complexity of the lowlands with their myriad species, plants, insects, birds. This is like a painting with a lot of colors spread out with nuance like a peacock’s tail.’

  ‘Precisely, Tirtha, but can a peacock live on a Himalayan peak? Tell me, you’ve been studying these slopes, is life more robust at the bottom or the top? Fewer species are higher, but those that are there can adapt to cold, heat, wet, darkness, able to respond to change, not just surviving but thriving. Consider just the tiny gentians; they are so delicate, but they take pummeling of cold, wind, and sun, and continue to bloom. They have a different luxuriantness. Changes that would extinguish life in the tropics (temperature, light, moisture) up high become dynamics of growth.

  ‘There are two biological strengths, one richly fills the stable lowland and one robustly grows in zones of demanding life. The resilience of the hardy equips it to deal with climate unpredictability, adapting to cold and hot, building food reserves, enduring sun and long darkness—and when death comes, decay puts away reserves, allowing organic depth to build reserves.’

  Tirtha laughs, ‘As a scientist, whose training is understanding the tree of life, we look to classify species. When one is trained in beetles, that person is excited to find places rich in beetles. This is not questioning that value of biodiversity—only adding a second perspective, bioresilience, to describe another aspect of Nature’s complexity.’

  I reply, ‘Since Linnaeus, the biologist’s task has been what you are doing. Only recently have biologists started organized description of how species create ecosystems. Biodiversity one way to assess that focuses on differences between species, and bioresilience is another that focuses on abilities in one species to cross differences of habitat.’

  Tirtha breaks in, ‘Dimensions are more than biodiversity and bioresilience, for both are characteristics of species. Ecosystems, which you’ve just mentioned, you do not have quite right—ecosystems are how species engage with the resources on which they live. If resources are taken away, where does regeneration for the larger system come from? Ecosystems function in both biodiversity and bioresilience. In species diverse systems, regeneration comes from other life. In resilient systems regeneration comes from harbored resources. Habitat is definitive.’

  Lendoop, as we talked though, was pondering another question. ‘Sirs, why do you not kill animals; this jungle is full of good meat? We have a hunter of the King who carries one of the King’s excellent rifles. No police will stop us from shooting. And yet, you eat old meat from Kathmandu. Why not fresh animals in the jungle?’

  ‘Shikariji,’ I reply, ‘Certainly the deer here must be sweet. But hunting jungle animals will scare the bears. It is the bears we came to find.’

  ‘Then why is Kazi allowed to shoot birds? Firing his gun five, eight, times each day scares more bears than the royal gun shot once or twice.’

  Tirtha chuckles. ‘You are right, shikari sahib. Maybe Kazi’s noise is why we have not found bears.’

  ‘I think you believe shooting is not good. Is it your religion? Is your caste too high? If so, let the hunter or me kill for you.’

  Tirtha laughs now, ‘It’s not religion, Lendoop, but some of us are afraid too many wild animals are being killed and the world’s wild places lost. The belief is like a religious belief. It is called conservation.’

  ‘Tirtha sahib, I do not understand. The world has many jungles, many wild animals.’

  ‘Not true, shikari sahib,’ I insert. ‘This Barun is the last wild valley in Nepal. A few more valleys are in China, India, and Bhutan. And you may think the Barun will remain wild, but by the time you die, the Barun that you know as wild will have died before you.’

  Lendoop looks at Tirtha. ‘Doctor sahib, deer here are many. Bears are many, these damage people’s crops, and little birds do nothing. Why do you who come, who possess so much, worry about animals that take care of themselves, that grow by themselves, when hard working people are without water, in villages with little food?’

  Tirtha replies, ‘Those who try to save the jungle do not live in it. Where they live, the jungle is gone so their focus is on that which is gone, animals, rivers. For aspects of the world that are no longer wild there is a special focus. And each of these departments has as its purpose a priority other than the full life of people.’

  Lendoop interrupts, ‘Our life organizes by caste. Is the Western way to organize by government departments?’

  Tirtha and I both laugh. ‘Yes, perhaps departments are the world’s way to create caste,’ Tirtha continues. ‘In America few people are like the villagers of Shyakshila where the same person farms, builds his house, and goes into the jungle. People specialize as societies get wealthier. They call this specialization ‘progress’ as they work in their departments. That world of many niches they believe to be a stronger way of life. Mountain people are resilient, working across life zones, living by adapting, doing many tasks.’

  I get the sense that Lendoop senses being spoken to as though he’s ignorant. He rises and walks to Pasang’s fire.

  ‘Tirtha, perhaps Lendoop misunderstood, but I loved how you just characterized biodiversity using Western culture with multi-speciation into work niches and inability to adapt, then Shyakshila culture as bioresilient because it adapts across life niches. May I get you some tea?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  By the fire, as I wait for the tea gives me a chance to joke with Lendoop about taking tealeaves to the botanist so he can study these.

  As Tirtha and I drink, I then reflect to him, ‘Conservation’s work, Tirtha, as we were trying to explain to Lendoop, does not build to making a difference, despite intent to do. Rather, it helps our conscience.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tirtha asks, as with knee on a plant press he pulls the straps, adding two straps the other way then pulling these tight.

  ‘Here’s an example, Tirtha. Westerners see litter to be a problem. Litter pickup any group, schoolchildren, business executives, will mention as positive action. Clearing trash does not affect biodiversity, endangered species, or resource potential. Putting people to work thinking they are “saving the environment” masks the true problem which is consumption. Focusing on the little takes our view away from the big. Picking up trash lets people think they act on a problem when actually they are hiding it … hiding that they have trash in the first place.’

  ‘You’re missing the deeper lesson,’ Tirtha replies. ‘When we clean up after ourselves, we become aware of what we did. Do you not remember the awareness that came to you of your prior visit when you arrived here a month ago and found your old trash? Dan’l, your Yeti is not a search for a wild man but specifically for you, how wildness has left men.’

  ‘How about the two of us take a walk in this still-wild jungle we will soon depart,’ I smile. ‘Let’s stop pressing plants.’ He and I refill our enamel mugs at Pasang’s fire then step into the forest. Rounding a tree, we come upon Bob sitting alone, he gets up, and three men quietly walk on, together.

  WHAT BELONGS TO ALL HAS BEEN A CONCERN OF MY SISTER, Betsy Taylor, and her husband, Herbert Reid. While I focused on conserving specific places, they looked at dynamics planetwide, rethinking the ancient concept of the commons for the 21st century.1 They introduce the point with a quote from Wendell Berry, ‘the earth is what we all have in common … it is what we are made of and what we live from … we therefore cannot damage it without damaging those with whom we share it.’ 2 The whole Earth is a commons.

  13.2 Tirtha in Jungle

  Source: David Ide

  Ownership, of course, begins in the mind: people believe some ‘thing’ belongs to them. Individuals transient on the Earth assume that existence outside their being is inside their control. Ownership of eternal continuation belongs to a temporal being. From that follows the right to control (even destroy) the eternal. The converse premise (the commons) is that we are connected to all. Global reality, Earth�
�s very fabric, is being changed due to an idea that came into people’s minds.

  My sister and her husband argue that the commons is a concept from earlier ages that offers is a more authentic approach: stewardship in the present and across time. Stewardship differs from ownership; it does not posit that realities non-living, which have grown from Time’s beginning, can be utilized by one part at one moment. The concept of the commons realizes that we come from shared inheritance, and in accepting the gift of today take on the responsibility to pass that on.

  In assuming a fragment of the world that has existed for all time belongs not just uniquely but to a soon-to-die being who will consume that—the consequence, when ratcheted up, diminishes planetary inheritance. The loss created is not only that for today, but also across time, distancing us from not only each other but the lineage of time.

  We move towards this declining potential, Betsy and Herb argue, through systems premised in the individual and that support the collective loss. We have created systems that move our global collective from an orientation of ‘live within’ to ‘take from’. ‘Products, ideas, images, money, and people zip more rapidly around the world. But, are we closer? Are we inhabiting and co-inhabiting more capacious, inclusive, and resilient worlds?’ 3 The new view is a human-made world—lost is the perspective of common sharing.

  In making this new creation, we step towards worshiping ourselves. In locating this within a system, that system evermore separates our awareness from the interlinked complex that is real reality. This gives me insight. Needed then, I realize, is to grow a new system not premised on individual ownership of the eternal, a system to grow the commons.

  So to protect the Barun, our group must define the Barun in relation to people—a community that includes Lendoop, his king, our handful of experts, in an understanding extension to a global community. Our task is to create a commons for today and perpetuity, recovering a concept of sharing a world once all parkland.

  Actions at one level will define boundaries, catalog species, understand relationships. This is the ‘saving’ step. This will require caretakers who abide by rules and make others abide. I do not yet know how to do this, but it is clear the answer must shun the customary option of management by paid wardens. Aside from increasing evidence around the world that this protection model succeeds only at limited scope, aside from parallel evidence that when effective it compromises the lives of those who lived near and were its stewards (like Lendoop and Shyakshila villagers), there is a pragmatic reason: neither I nor the His Majesty’s Government have the money to add now in creating a national park for the Barun another traditionally managed park. I must find a new way to grow the commons, one for here and one that can be used in other places.

  The premise of control must be let go. In the premise of the commons is the solution. Responsibility is with all. People will participate when they see a reason that is in their self-interest. Conservation that endures and expands is not pockets, is not protecting ‘wilderness’ (where people have been made absent). Success comes with setting up a system premised in living with, adopting and growing. For this is as with life itself. The search is not for a wild man but for how wildness has left men, then to bring that wildness back.

  WE SIT NOW AT THE CONFLUENCE OF THE BARUN AND ARUN RIVERS. Tomorrow the chopper arrives to lift us away. For two days we have been buying bear skulls from villagers and now possess fourteen. Each skull, except one, is old, brown, and dirty. Most have been sitting in villagers’ granaries to scare off rats and mice.

  ‘Well, John, what does our bear expert think?’

  ‘Hell, I work with live bears, and they are grizzlies. Those bears reconsider their opinion about you in such a short time you can’t consider them at all. In half a century of bear research I’ve never looked at fourteen dead skulls. Anyhow, let’s arrange them into order. Some, you see, are tiny, others large; some old, others young.’

  Over the next half hour, John arranges them according to size then spends more than an hour making notes about each, drawing up a little chart, with suppositions to presumed age, basing estimates on tooth wear and skull sutures. Then he lays out the fourteen according to the chart, makes notes as he sees relationships shift.

  Our expedition group gathers around, ‘Well, John?’

  ‘I’m not a bear taxonomist. But, to me, all skulls appear to be from the same species. I see only size and age distinguishing. No feature suggests two species.’

  ‘Maybe the fourteen are all tree bears, Dad,’ Derek suggests.

  ‘That is possible, Derek, but the villagers that brought them claim the big skulls at the end of the line are ground bears. At what point do we stop believing villagers when we have skulls, zoology’s gold standard, in front of us? Further, what are the chances of fourteen tree bears and not one ground bear if two bears are in these jungles? Their trapping technique does not say ‘yes’ to one and ‘no’ to the other. With fourteen, probabilities are strong both are here.’

  Derek comes back, ‘Then, Dad, how do you explain their two bear explanation?’

  ‘Keeping an open mind that maybe differences are there that don’t show in the skulls, but arguing based on the skulls, I see only one explanation: tree bear is a juvenile ground bear. And, knowing something about bear behaviour, my explanation to what villagers experience is that sonofabitch old male bears, seeking to dominate food, drive small juvenile bears up into the trees where these big males cannot follow. Adult aggression makes the big bears “ground bears” and the little bears “tree bears”. When a mother’s around on the ground, the young are protected, but once a cub leaves mom … when papa reappears, the yearling or twoling skedaddles up a tree.’

  We absorb John’s proposal of old-man bhui balu and twoling rukh balu. It seems to make all the reported differences come together. Aggressive bears are adults and big, the shy are young and small. Villagers’ behavioural claims are explained, as well as the absence of distinctiveness in skulls.

  A thought comes to me: ‘John, in some animals, the butterfly for example, there are major differences between juveniles and adults; a caterpillar is totally different from butterfly. Among bears, do other juvenile and adults differ in behaviour as you’re suggesting for tree bear and ground bear? With such, might you be suggesting something unique to these bears? Between the two, we’re hearing claims of big differences in food type, habitats, as well as behaviour. Among humans, of course, such differences exist adults to children. Does such exist in any bear?’

  ‘All bears I know behave and eat essentially the same juveniles to adults. Maybe you’ve popped my hypothesis. It’ll be quite a discovery if in a nonhuman species is such a difference—but remember humans developed our age-based differences recently: parents go to work and children go to school, boys wear pants girls wear dresses, even wearing clothes is worth noting, a trait, found not in our genes but in the phenomenon we call civilization.’

  Tempted to suggest we take off our clothes, I reply: ‘John, I don’t think you should be surprised about this bear being like people. After all, it has a footprint like a human, we even saw it using snowshoes it made out of rhododendron branches; people have called it a snowman for a hundred years.’

  John laughs, ‘Hell, you never let up! Let’s break camp and get to hot showers.’

  ‘No John,’ I grin back, ‘let’s return to these valleys and find that cave.’

  13.3 John in the Jungle

  Source: David Ide

  I AM EN ROUTE FROM THE USA TO THE HIMALAYA AGAIN. I’ve been making this flight when in my first trip in 1947 en route meant not airports but also water ports and a ‘flying boat’ with splash landings in the Nile, Arabian Sea, and Karachi Harbour. Intercontinental flights require turning activity to the mind, and the crutch to make time pass are books to let the mind go to other places. My early trips were having read to me Peter Rabbit and Make Way for Ducklings. Later came my reading gritty cowboy novels, then National Parks, and Protected Areas: Priori
ties for Action by the same Jeff McNeely who earlier chased Yetis. Now I fly with Bill McKibben’s Eaarth, and Jack Turner’s The Abstract Wild.

  Conserving the Barun will require bringing Homo sapiens in, in partnership. We who gather to do this have little money and are not a big organization—yet with a people-based vision the objective is not protecting a valley only but connecting to the world. People are part of Nature. This is equally true for pristine jungle as the remade nature of cities where people, even in walking never touch things other than human-made. Jack Turner is telling me the wild is still possible, in the Barun and in the manufactured world. With people as partners, scope changes because no longer is the action removing people.

  This story of people’s actions with the wild is being written in the sky also, for flowing out behind my airplane extend contrails. They are a line across the sky for a short while. Then they melt into air like footprints in snow. But extending from them are imprints not seen, arcs of carbon. Here, higher than Everest and Makalu, are signs in substance that began within the Earth not long ago, made from earlier living much much longer ago, where their contrary tales will last long into Time. We have made a new Eaarth, McKibben is telling me.

  Communications are what binds our new life ways. The new Eaarth is fundamentally one of hyper connection, an info-sphere being melded with the changing biosphere driven by an econo-sphere. Binding linkages have drawn these spheres together. Over receding horizon behind extend radio waves, and magnetic waves pull us to the horizon ahead. The new info-sphere knits together the bio- and econo-spheres—knitted in a socio-econo-info-biosphere.4 Changing now is presentation of wildness.

  The old spheres in these realms were separated. As a boy I thought what defined the wild were animals that could jump out and eat me. But wild animals are not the wild; they are individuals like myself who present as life I cannot control. Potential now for living in wildness is everywhere. We must open to a world we do not presume to control. It allows two people to talk without speaking while walking a night trail; it speaks to the people of Shyakshila of my coming, and it reaches to deep recesses of humanity that have never met and causes both Jennifer and me to identify kin in a girl in a basket and told the same to her?