Near my home in Anchorage, a strip of birch and spruce woods runs from a residential street out to the edge of a bluff overlooking a sweeping expanse of wetland. In the spring, I like to watch from the bluff as migrating birds arrive from as far away as the Southern Hemisphere. They are drawn to the mild summer days with no ends, like perpetual mornings. Many are merely laying over on their way to breeding grounds in the Arctic; others will spend the summer here, rearing the next generation of geese or swans. Activity is clustered along the high tide line of Cook Inlet, almost a mile from the bluff. With the power of a spotting scope, I can see a vibrant world where diving terns, stalking sandhill cranes and swift-moving shorebirds pursue their enigmatic lives beyond the reach of the naked eye.
The sense of peace I derive from these observations is profound. I find it deeply reassuring to witness animals interacting with one another and with the landscape, as I imagine they have for thousands of years. Theirs is a self-sustaining community with its own etiquettes and hierarchies, personalities and dramas, unburdened by the preoccupations of humankind. One spring day, as I walked the unmarked trail along the base of the bluff, I stopped dead at the unmistakable sight of grizzly tracks in the mud.
Encounters like these are momentary intersections with a world beyond our understanding. They place human activities, so paramount in our minds, in their larger context. When I watch birds from the bluff, wondering about the messages conveyed by particular calls or behaviors, I confront the fact that, at any given time, I have only the faintest grasp of what is happening. The mystery of such moments is central to their power.
A STAGGERING AMOUNT is known today about the lives of wild animals. Data gathered through years of field study and monitoring with tools like aerial surveys, satellite tracking and remote cameras has providxed incredible insights into their habits and movements. Increasingly, the observations of amateurs, armed with species identification apps and eager to record their sightings, have been supplementing this global store of knowledge. Online, one can find maps that depict in fine detail the distribution across Alaska of hundreds of species; charts that analyze their year-over-year population trends down to the third decimal point; and recordings that capture even their most obscure vocalizations and behaviors.
This kind of information is valuable to many: Researchers in university biology departments. Policymakers weighing the impacts of proposed legislation. Developers obligated by law to determine whether a project will encroach on vulnerable habitat. Amateurs like my wife and me, who find something innately satisfying about getting to know our wild neighbors. Ultimately, it is most critical to those in the government agencies responsible for wildlife management.
In Alaska, like much of the West, hunting and fishing remain deeply ingrained. Wildlife populations are closely monitored and managed by government agencies — manipulated, some would say. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game sets population targets for certain species within specific geographic areas: 1,500 to 1,800 moose in Game Unit 14C, which covers the alpine valleys east of Anchorage; between 2,100 and 2,400 caribou in Game Unit 19A, within the Kuskokwim River drainage; a minimum of 250 Dall sheep in Game Units 20B, 20F, and 25C, encompassing the White Mountains, to list a few. These numbers are enormously consequential. They dictate — and, it is not cynical to say, are dictated by — both the length of hunting seasons and the number of permits made available to hunt not only the target species but also those known to prey on them, predators like wolves and bears. The result is that while natural forces cause populations of these animals to fluctuate, government-sanctioned hunting maintains them at unnaturally stable levels.
For many of us, the resonance of animals lies in their defining wildness — that ineffable quality conveyed so powerfully by the overhead scream of a red-tailed hawk or the grunt of a grizzly at close range or the headlong dive of a river otter into the sweeping current. They are — to a degree we often feel ourselves unable to be— free. It can be dispiriting, then, to realize just how closely the human hand guides the fates of so many creatures. It can lead one to ask uncomfortable questions. Is an elk herd less wild because its size is the result of an algorithm applied by a government biologist in a distant state capital? And is there a point at which a herd manipulated to such an extent begins to resemble livestock?
Is an elk herd less wild because its size is the result of an algorithm applied by a government biologist in a distant state capital?
The language of wildlife management reflects this sense that wild animals are primarily objects that serve the needs of people, rather than exquisitely adapted beings whose evolution into their current form long preceded our own. The term for a successful hunt — “harvest” — likens wild animals to crops. “Furbearer” reduces mammals to their most commercially valuable parts. The word “game” has its origins in sport. This lexicon is a reminder that some large but immeasurable portion of human knowledge about animals was acquired for the purpose of determining how many of them it is acceptable for us to kill.
Few would dispute that the modern system of wildlife management is superior to the hands-off approach it replaced. Had 19th century officials been equipped with today’s information and authority, perhaps bison would still roam the plains in extraordinary numbers. Endless flocks of passenger pigeons might still darken the skies. The information we possess today would have been unimaginable then. Even less conceivable would have been the means available to analyze it. It is now possible to identify, even anticipate, a struggling population, then formulate and implement measures to revive it — fulfilling the inspired premise of laws like the Endangered Species Act.
But there are limits to what we know.
Each year, state fish and game departments must issue in advance a specific number of hunting tags. To satisfy the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must declare whether or not a given federal project — a mining road, say, or a solar farm — will “jeopardize the continued existence” of a threatened species. There is no maybe option, though sometimes that is the only credible answer. Government scientists are expected to be ecological oracles, capable of foreseeing outcomes that are often impossible to predict. The irony is that they understand better than anyone the futility of this task.
The stated purpose of the Endangered Species Act — to protect vulnerable species and their habitats — along with its recognition of the “aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value” of plant and animal life, remains a beacon of a saner, more conscientious world. But as the condition of global habitat continues to decline, it is time to admit some things: That our structures for managing wildlife rest on a hopelessly incomplete foundation. That no matter how much data we gather, we will not be able to speak with the certainty our laws require. And that we are beholden to the illusion that we know much more than we do.
We are beholden to the illusion that we know much more than we do.
ON A MAY AFTERNOON at the bluff, I watch as a pair of sandhill cranes hunt in the tall grass of the estuary. Heads down, they scour the sodden ground, periodically snaring a frog or crustacean with their bayonet beaks. The sounds and movements of other birds frequently disrupt their concentration. They turn to assess the bald eagle, or the incoming geese, or the source of some other disturbance that I cannot discern. Then they resume the hunt. When a lone crane floats in from the north, the reaction is decidedly different. They turn their beaks skyward and issue discordant, rattling warnings. The new arrival lands just a few yards from the pair, inflaming the situation. Intensifying calls fail to dissuade the lone crane, who returns them in kind. Violence appears imminent.
I am consumed by the standoff. Why has the newcomer chosen this particular spot? Is this a male trying to lure the female before mating begins? Or is this hunting ground so promising that it’s worth fighting for? In an instant, the tension dissolves. The pair return their gaze to the grass. The lone crane commences its hunt. The matter appears to have been settled. Something that I cannot perceive has passed between these animals.
I would never argue that careful management is unnecessary, or that statistical analysis is not essential. Humanity’s disruption of the natural world has been too severe, too pervasive, to simply wash our hands. But to effectively manage the relationship between people and animals, I would insist that a role must be reserved for wonder, and for awe. Because to feel amazed by wild creatures — astonished by what you witnessed, certain never to forget it — is not naïve or sentimental. Such feelings are the only appropriate response to the mysteries of wildness that science cannot explain.
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