Rachel Carson famously published her cry of reason, the book Silent Springs, back in 1961 and in doing so provided one of the foundational pieces of literature for the ecological movement. In her time, a horrifying and disproportionate crusade was being fought on many of nature’s common creatures, leading to millions of pounds of deadly poison being indiscriminately airdropped on to forests, farms, pastures, rivers, lakes, homes, and even cities. Many will know that it was the popularity of this book which ultimately lead to the banning of several chlorofluorocarbon pesticides such as DDT, and some of the negligent practices used to spread them. This book should be history, yet in reading it 60 years later today the attitudes from those times and the natural destruction they cause still feel so familiar.
Though many harmful actions were curbed by this book, it is clear that we still suffer from the root cause; ecological ignorance, the belief that we can manipulate or eradicate an element of the environment without it effecting all other interconnected components. This is evident in the things we feed our food, the materials we still put in the environment, and the way we still see ourselves as separate from nature. For a more light-hearted example of this, I have the ecological research of Dan Flores who is famous for his work with coyotes. When the state of California made an effort to reduce coyote populations to reduce the deaths of pets and livestock, what they found is a paradox. Coyotes having evolved along side another effective apex predator besides humans, the grey wolf, are adapted to increase their rates of reproduction and spread themselves to new locations once even a few coyotes start disappearing. What this means is that not only is it almost impossible to reduce coyote populations manually, but that attempting to do so causes their population to drastically rise. When humans try to change nature without understanding how its balance is maintained, things will never go our way.
I had one more major realization from reading this book, and it’s much more grim. When people think of interesting and beautiful animals, places such as Africa and the Amazon often come to mind. Compared to the squirrels, few birds, and domesticated pets most of our daily exposure to animals in the west is comprised of, living along side monkeys and elephants sounds like a fantasy. It may seem that this is simply the natural order of things when we are taught in kindergarten that elephants live in the savannas, and monkeys in the jungle, but what is left out is that at one point in time America too had great beasts and vibrant birds. Though it may seem like the natural 0rder to assume colorful dancing birds only taken place in tropical areas, everyone should remember that dozens of species of birds in America were rendered extinct only 100 years ago so their beautiful feathers could be made into hats. Remember that our majestic herds of bison were wiped out to cause the starvation of native Americans. Remember that our nature feels less exotic, less diverse, less beautiful, only because we killed it.
