Tag: Nature
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FITZGERALD RIVER NATIONAL PARK
Fitzgerald River National Park is one of Western Australia’s largest parks but only comprises 0.13% of the State’s total area. Yet 20% of the State’s flora can be found in the park. It’s a ridiculously diverse region of the State where you can find 1800 species of flowering plants. About 60 of those species are found nowhere else in the world. I’m still trying to learn why Western Australia has so much biodiversity but I think I understand the basic formula. You’ve got an ancient land which has been isolated for…
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LONG-TERM GAINS IN THE AMAZON
Reserva Nacional Pacaya-Samiria, Peruvian Amazon – 1989 ‘Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.’ Edward O. Wilson Those of you in my generation growing up in America probably had the same Sunday evening pastime as my family: we would watch the National Geographic specials. I loved that show and would dream of venturing off to far off, exotic lands in search of untouched natural wonders. On one of those evenings I vowed that someday I would travel to the Amazon. But I didn’t…
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RESERVES OF STRENGTH
‘Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.’ Rachel Carson, Silent Spring In the summer of 1978, I worked as a naturalist at Interstate State Park in northern Wisconsin. I loved plants and figured I knew every plant in the park by both its common and Latin names by the end of the summer. I was…
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CLIMB THAT GODDAMN MOUNTAIN
‘Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.’ Jack Kerouac There’s one thing I learned early on while working in a mountainous national park in the Pacific Northwest: never let a little cloud cover deter you from climbing a mountain. I had a few days off from my job as a ranger in the summer of 1980 at North Cascades National Park and drove over to neighbouring Mt Baker National Forest to climb up to the…
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ALONE AT NITINAT
‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’ Henry David Thoreau, Walden ‘I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.’ Henry David Thoreau If someone were to ask me what was my favourite trek ever, I wouldn’t miss a beat in replying it was my six-day trek along the West Coast Trail…
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PASQUE FLOWERS FOR THE MINORITIES
‘For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.’ Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac When I was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point I took a nature literature class and read A Sand County Almanac. The book was written in 1949 by University of Wisconsin professor Aldo Leopold and became a pivot piece of literature in the environmental movement and helped pave the way so that I would…
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ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS
‘Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.’ Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire In the summer of 1980, I had the best job ever. I was a park ranger at North Cascades National Park in Washington. Part of my job was ‘trail patrol’ and for one day a week…
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BRAULIO CARRILLO
Recollections from travels in Costa Rica – 1981-1986 Just north of San José, looms Braulio Carrillo National Park, a rugged park of almost 500 square kilometres. Braulio has an elevation variation of almost 3000 metres so you’ve got seven life zones from cloud forest to lowland tropical forest. Yet despite its proximity to San José most of the park was rarely visited in the 1980s simply because it was impenetrable. A highway completed in the late 1980s changed that and now Braulio is probably the most visited park, although most people…
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THE EXPLORATION OF LA AMISTAD
In 1982, the Costa Rican government created the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve which covers a massive area in southern Costa Rica along the Talamanca mountain range. At the time, the biosphere was relatively unknown to scientists – very few had ventured into the depths of the Talamanca. The Costa Rican National Park Service hired wildlands consultant, Jim Barborak, to assist his national counterparts in conducting a biological, anthropological and geological inventory of the biosphere. There weren’t any photographs from the depths of the park, so I joined the research teams as…
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