A recent trip to Australia provided me with the opportunity to swim with giant manta rays, walk among ancient cycads and towering pines and gaze across majestic gorges carved through rocks that once lay at the bottom of a great sea.
As I marveled at these wondrous sights, a sense of melancholy fell over me. Despite the power these wonders have to connect us to the natural world, I knew that in living memory there had been a different world. A world I had not seen. A world that my children will never see. A world that will never be seen again.
I know this because we humans like to record things. From the exquisite Lascaux cave paintings of now-extinct aurochs in France to the grainy photograph of Australian farmer Wilf Batty proudly posing with the last wild Tasmanian tiger, our species has a unique ability to carefully document our conquests over nature.
More than this, we suffer from the inexcusable hubris that among all of the creatures we share the planet with, we alone know what is right. That somehow, three and a half billion years of biological evolution has gotten it all wrong. That the Garden of Eden described in the book of Genesis was imperfect until we came along and decimated the forests, strained the seas of life, stole the grass for our cattle and sheep, and murdered all those who got in our way.
The Tasmanian tiger, more properly known as the thylacine, was a marsupial apex predator about the size of a dog. The last one died of neglect a little more than 80 years ago in an Australian zoo, but an Australian government eradication policy had doomed the thylacine to extinction long before then. In the mistaken belief that these beautiful creatures posed a threat to ranchers, a bounty was paid for every thylacine killed. Our relentless encroachment on their land, the introduction of our dogs and diseases, and our careless disregard to be faithful stewards of the Earth ultimately sealed their fate.
As I stood looking down at one of three Tasmanian devils held in captivity in a Brisbane zoo. I wondered if I, too, might be bearing witness to the extinction of a species. Like their cousins the thylacines, Tasmanian devils were mistakenly thought to pose a threat to livestock and were relentlessly hunted down. Today they survive only in a few places. Despite our recent efforts to protect them, their fate may soon be sealed by a unique facial cancer that is spread via bites inflicted as they vie for space and the dwindling prey on which they depend for survival.
Standing in Lamington National Park, I listened to the intricate song of an Albert’s lyrebird calling for a mate. At that moment, I was reminded of a Greek proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
One hundred years ago, in 1915, a handful of loggers realized that they were on the verge of cutting down the last of the ancient trees. Because Queensland, Australia, has never been covered with glaciers, these forests are among the oldest on earth. They contain giant tree ferns and mosses that remain unchanged since the time before dinosaurs. Knowing full well that it meant an end to their livelihoods, these loggers none the less petitioned the government to have these forests set aside for posterity. The only reason I could behold these wonders, and the only reason my children and grandchildren can hope to marvel at these things for themselves, is because old men had the wisdom to plant trees — or at least not cut them down.
In a few weeks’ time, world leaders will gather in Paris to discuss the fate of our planet. The United Nations Climate Change Conference has the goal of creating a plan whereby humanity can coexist with, and benefit from, the natural world. I pray that these men and women will have the wisdom of those Australian loggers and that our leaders will have the moral strength to put their plans into action.
A Chinese proverb is worth remembering: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”
Mark Farmer is a professor of cellular biology at the University of Georgia.
Farmer: Man"s hubris takes toll on natural world
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