Audio: How nature can thrive despite human influences

I’ve been thinking about human-caused climate change and what it means to be resilient to it. Sometimes we can’t see these changes on the planet, but we feel the effects. Sometimes it’s overwhelming to notice these effects, but we may not know how well we can adapt. Or can we even adapt?

Sometimes our impact leaves scars on the land, sometimes not. Some of the scars may be difficult to read. They are too subtle, like early blooms or like changes in birdsong. Other scars? They remain painful and visually visible for a long, long time.

Satellite images show the impact of out-of-control wildfires in California, most recently the Mountain Fire, which forced thousands of people to flee and destroyed at least 170 buildings. Within a few days and weeks, these landscapes smolder and look charred. In coming years, this scorched soil will struggle to support mature trees; The country will be prone to flooding. With no food or shelter, many wild animals may stay away.

We humans have been leaving our mark on the planet since our days as hunters and gatherers.

BBC: “This belongs to Bingham. It produces enough ore each year to rewire every home in the United States and Mexico.”

The BBC documentaryThis is how people changed the worldshows a human activity that has left visible traces: mining. The Bingham Mine in Utah, or the Kennecott Copper Mine as locals call it, is the largest in the world. From above, it’s an incredible sight: the pit is wide and deep, as deep underground as the 10,000-foot Oquirrh Mountains rise into the sky around it.

BBC: “The Bingham Canyon Mine continues to grow in size. Today we are about 2 1/2 miles wide at our widest point and almost a mile deep at our deepest point. As we grow larger, we move back in sections about 1,000 feet long. These thousand-foot cuttings will take seven years to get to the ore. And after that, we will continue to mine ore to produce the copper we need.”

It’s hard to imagine what the Oquirrh Mountains, with their canyons and dense forests, looked like before mining began there in the late 18th century.

About six years ago, in a small corner of Los Angeles, California, I set out to try to understand the effects of human influence on a micro level.

I walked along the banks of the Los Angeles River, near downtown, next to Travis Longcore, a historical ecologist who teaches at the University of Southern California and has researched species that are thriving despite—or perhaps because of—their existence. human disorder.

Travis encouraged me to see even the densest and most built environments as places where nature can thrive. Think coyotes. And pollinator gardens in the middle of the city.

Longcore: “And I’m walking this way, and of course, you know… deer weed, right? Deerweed is a great food plant for butterflies. And in fact, the Palos Verde blue butterfly, one of the ones we’re working on down in Palos Verdes on a military installation, is endangered because we’ve somehow protected it too well. It’s a tank farm. And they say, “Hands off, hands off.” And we say, “No, we need to disrupt more.” And you come to a place like this and you’re reminded that this… and there’s a spring butterfly that comes with this The plant associated here is… this is a disturbance-loving plant; It is a plant that follows disturbances. It is short-lived; It is a native plant of the chaparral and coastal sage scrub and thrives here because it is a disturbed site. And there’s a few other things when you look around – there’s coyote bushes, and there’s mule fat and whatnot, which are sort of bulletproof, you know, river terrace plants.

“Mule Fat Scrub, it’s just like this: you’re here, right on the construction site. It’s one of the first things I see when I come out here.”

Mule Fat Scrub is native to the entire West Coast, from Oregon all the way down to Baja, Mexico. There are these clusters of tiny white, fluffy flowers that bloom around July and attract bees, butterflies and other pollinators.

It’s hard to say how long these plants have been growing along the LA River, but we know that no one planted them. Nobody waters them. …And it is safe to assume that they have been in this area for centuries and will continue to be so in the future. Despite the disruption. Because of the disorder. Because nature has shown that if we just give it a little space, it will find a way to get back on its feet.

We cannot ignore many of these changes. They are not a minor annoyance.

But we are still at a point in our history on this planet where we can, with a lot of imagination, imagine a future in which our impact is even a little smaller. Nature itself – how it heals, adapts and changes – is probably our best teacher.

“Encounters” is an ongoing column exploring life and the landscape during the climate crisis.