Back To Nature. [Rewilding by Monbiot]

[Goatboy]

Remember when Hercules the bear escaped while filming an advert in Scotland yonks back? For the duration of his going walkabout the Highlands pretty much emptied of walkers and holiday makers. People have lived for too long here with nothing but boozed up anglers preying on them when they're camping they just wouldn't stand for it. It's deemed a horror story in thw press if a Jack Russell so much as snaps at a toddler, first time a lynx carries of a two year old the person who released it or allowed it to "accidentaly" escape would be lynched. Such a small land mass with so many folk and so much intensive land use will cause conflict. And I think the ones to loose out would be the poor animals in the end.
Also we don't have the depth of environmental strata to sustain these beasts. Add that to the fact that we cant balance what we allready have living here and I just see disaster.
It would be nice from a personal POV to see those beasts but I'm not egotistical enough to want them to suffer for my enjoyment.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[Joe tahkahikew]

.... camping in the wild where you are far from the top predator is way more entertaining than camping in UK ....g

We would not describe it as entertaining. We don't worry at all about animals normally and certainly not brother wolf who is wise and keeps out of trouble so he's no bother. On the edge of the tundra it is the big grizzly you have to be careful of. He may come creeping into your camp you if have lots of food and he is hungry and he's difficult to scare away and hard to kill too. Wild animals here never hunt us. Always the other way around!

 

[Joe tahkahikew]

THe noble savage myth is just that - a myth. Short, savage lives, horrific infant mortality, fluctuating between starvation and plenty, constant localised warfare.

To the savage, it was just like our cities, only more dangerous. He wouldn't have taken delight about a dolphin, instead worried that it would scare away fish he was depending on to keep his family alive for one more day. The fawn wasn't something to go "ooh - isn't he cute" over, instead seeing it as just a source of protein.

.....Andy you maybe make assumptions about people you only know from books. We in the far north had very few wars with other tribal groups. For one reason maybe. No white people to push us from one place to another and into someone elses lands. We have always been friends with other tribes in both the bush and on the tundra. The land is big and people few. Why fight and risk life?

Most of us who hunt to live love animals. Our children keep orphaned animals and grow them up, our children like fawns as much as white children. If I see brother wolf on the barren grounds I don't worry if he scares animals away as I know he's only trying to make life like we do and I can't dislike him for looking after his own family.

When I was in Yorkshire I spent time with gamekeeper and farmer. Both liked their animals but both needed to kill animals to live. It is the same for us that hunt.

 

[Toddy]

Great Britain, the biggest island, has a landmass of 80,823 square miles, and a population of over 60,000,000 (that's just on the main island)
Canada's Victoria Island has a landmass of 83,897 square miles, and a population of 1,707

Kind of needs to be factored into Monbiot's equation really.

M

 

[Joe tahkahikew]

The wonder of civilisation is that a hunter-gatherer could have access to the interner, for example. Theoretically pick and mix what you want from the wild and the urban. Slight problem of earning enough cash to pay for the chosen way of life but that is an interesting challenge in itself.

.

You and Andy are right, our young people are attracted to your life and goods the same as moths to light. And this is both good and a problem. No job up here for young people and making a living or hunting/gathering food does not earn enough money to have fancy things,so our young people leave. Many have problems in cities and drink and drugs and forget their old lives in the far north. When they get older and decide they want to come back home they find an empty village and have skills they can't use and the skills they need they no longer have.

I can and have made or built anything I need using an axe and an old knife. But it is easier to make many things such as a cabin with a chainsaw.

 

[Andy BB]

.....Andy you maybe make assumptions about people you only know from books. We in the far north had very few wars with other tribal groups. For one reason maybe. No white people to push us from one place to another and into someone elses lands. We have always been friends with other tribes in both the bush and on the tundra. The land is big and people few. Why fight and risk life?

Most of us who hunt to live love animals. Our children keep orphaned animals and grow them up, our children like fawns as much as white children. If I see brother wolf on the barren grounds I don't worry if he scares animals away as I know he's only trying to make life like we do and I can't dislike him for looking after his own family.

When I was in Yorkshire I spent time with gamekeeper and farmer. Both liked their animals but both needed to kill animals to live. It is the same for us that hunt.

I think you're looking at things from a perspective that is wildly different to that of even your relatively recent ancestors. Modern medicine has greatly reduced infant mortality, your people are not wholly dependent on hunting for food, I'm guessing you own cars, rifles, phones, radios, PCs, the internet, bank accounts, credit cards - the whole enchilada in fact. The very fact that you've travelled to the UK shows just how far removed you are from your hunter-gatherer ancestors. I highly doubt that they kept food animals as pets and fed them to adulthood rather than viewing them as protein.

In short, you've benefited from all the trappings of civilisation, including your children adopting the Walt Disney view of animals as pets. From the sounds of it you've actually got the best of both worlds, and I highly envy you that state of affairs

 

[Joe tahkahikew]

Andy

It is bad enough you call our people savages, but that you do so from only reading books is ignorance.

Yes I own two rifles, share an old pick up between two other families. We have only dirt roads here where we live but none in the forest. No where to use credit cards, or cell phones and there is only one store in our near village. Food is expensive to buy. It all comes in by air. Hunting is how we find food. I own no phone, nor does any of my group. There's no signal in most of Canada and internet only exists is registered communities I use village hall. (where I am now). Few cree outside towns own computors and many living in towns have no use for them.

Until very recently many cree had never met a white person and we still get very few up here. Many of our group died in the 1950s from starvation out on the tundra beccause they could get no help.

The highest mortality rate in Canada is in Indian groups living in remote rural locations beyond easy medical help. And most of the causes of death are from illnesses introduced by europeans - thanks Andy.

My grandparents who supported themselves entirely by hunting - this was long before indians got welfare benefits. They told me that all children like pets. They kept foxes, squirrels and birds and let them go. Do you think only your children who have the benefits of your civilisation love animals andy? That our uncilised ancestors were in some way different in feelings from civilised people?

Many indians here say we got only the bad things from white people who in turn took our land and animals in return.

I know of only one other Cree living up here who've left Canada. I only did because I won a sponsored grant and was supported by my English friend. I never met any one called walt disney though.

Andy it is clear you have never met an aboriginal and know nothing about our ancestors or our mode of living in either the past or the present. Don't forget we never called each other savages. That was the whites who did that because they judged us by their own bad standards. Any indian who was as bad as white men long ago would have been thrown out of the tribe.

Maybe you if you come to our country we'll take you into the bush to hunt and you'll see we are no different and never were. You can meet my pet dogs too.

 

[Countryman]

It's an old geopolitical trick. When you want something some other nation has you dehumanise them and make them seem scary, that way you can march in to save everybody, killing actively and passively through starvation and illness so you can take control of their assets and all for the greater good.


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[British Red]

I make no secret of my dislike of Monbiot, but unfortunately without a politics-heavy post, it would be difficult to explain why. Have no respect for the man's opinion at all I'm afraid. I'm sure he'll be devastated

The man is a contemptible fantasist. I refuse to read his tripe.

 

[Tengu]

In Bridges `The Uttermost Part of the World` he describes the natives as keeping pets...Sometimes its geese to act as decoys, and sometimes foxes and otters for no reason at all.
They dont last long with the dogs and children though.

But everyone keeps mutts, dont they?

 

[Dave]

Whereabouts in Yorkshire were you Joe? Did you go to York?

 

[Andy BB]

Joe, first of all I did not call "your people" savages - I used a generic expression referring to early hunter-gatherer environments. I'm sorry you immediately took umbrage without cause and considered it a direct attack on your people. However, talk to any anthropologist if you disagree with my comments re high mortality rates particularly amongst infants, fluctuations between starvation and plenty etc etc. And I'm sorry if you have a dislike of books and modern learning techniques - unfortunately the oral tradition no longer works in transmitting current knowledge levels necessary in these modern times. And I've got a terrible memory......

Secondly, I don't believe I have infected any Cree, either now or in the past. However, I suppose a racial stereotype is always a good one to buy into - guess all us white men are just bad people. I certainly wouldn't defend what us white people have got up to in the past, as we have a fairly horrific selection of nasties that have been well documented including the treatment of native Americans - and I'm sure that these are far worse than anything the Cree or other Native American tribes got up to. Although I'm sure that even you wouldn't try to claim that all of your people, and other similar tribes in America, didn't stray off the "currently-accepted moral path" now and then. There is certainly a large body of well-documented evidence to support that! And lets not forget that your racial ancestors are actually from Asia having travelled across the Bering Straits via the Beringia land bridge some 13-40,000 years ago. Yet no-one is blaming you for all the excesses of Genghis Khan for example. Or Pol Pot, or the Rape of Nanking, or the Japanese kidnapping of thousands of Korean and Chinese women to serve as slave prostitutes for the Japanese army, or the thousands of..............see where I'm going here? By the way, I got all of the above from books, as I wasn't there...................

I am glad however that modern conveniences are being used by you and your people, as evidenced by your cars, rifles, access to phones, computers, internet, medicine etc, even if less frequently than us evil white dudes.

However, whilst I am sad to note that some of your people are unable to benefit from modern medicine because of their remote locations and therefore have the highest mortality rates amongst Canadians, this does not negate the benefits potentially available to them. And I am sure that even they no longer use flint knives, for example.

As to my never having met a "noble savage" and getting all my learning from books, I suppose you sort of have me there. I am, I admit, a voracious reader. I've worked in 37 countries, and travelled for pleasure to maybe another 10 or so. And nowhere have I found a genuine Neolithic-level hunter-gatherer, because all the indigenous people I've met have benefited in multiple ways from modern civilisation, be it in clothing, weapons, metal pots and pans, knives etc etc. I'm certain there are some tribes in the Amazon, or Indonesian rain-forests who have not yet come up against the white man or his civilisation, but I regret I've not met them.

As to your grandparents memories, I admit I've had grand-parents too. And I've learnt from them - and other old people - that things were always better in the past! For some reason they overlook the bad - rickets, polio, diphtheria, poor food, insanitary conditions, outside toilets, lack of decent accommodation, heating, high infant mortality, lack of insulin to treat otherwise killer diseases, complete lack of understanding of historical events, general dislike of foreigners or understanding of their cultures etc etc etc - and concentrate on the perceived (even if inaccurate) good. Guess its a world-wide phenomenon!

As to the invite to visit the bush with you and meet your people - that sounds great, and one day I'd like to take you up on it. I hope however that I won't be required to walk great distances as my advanced age and 2 metal hips (couldn't resist putting that in, as otherwise I'd be in a wheelchair now - long live modern medicine!) might prove to be a handicap. And I'm sure we'll be using bows and arrows and flint knives to skin our game

And let's not forget I did say " From the sounds of it you've actually got the best of both worlds, and I highly envy you that state of affairs "

 

[Andy BB]

Great Britain, the biggest island, has a landmass of 80,823 square miles, and a population of over 60,000,000 (that's just on the main island)
Canada's Victoria Island has a landmass of 83,897 square miles, and a population of 1,707

Kind of needs to be factored into Monbiot's equation really.

M

Toddy, if you add in England's land area - 50,000 square miles - and current population - over 57 million it puts the stats into even starker focus.

 

[Tengu]

I too have Grandparents.

One of my great uncles died from type 1 diabetes...Just before insulin.

My mother nearly died from the same...She was the one of the first children to be put on insulin, and most of those in the ward with her died...the last at 29.

She lived to have me though she died of complications at 54...A combination of luck and more luck.

 

[Ed the Ted]

...Lynx in Scotland causing widespread destruction amongst the grouse moors for example...

So? The grouse moors were and are fostered and maintained for and by the wealthy for sport. You wouldn't catch me shedding a tear if a wily lynx got wind of the ridiculous grouse numbers huddled around grain feeders on even the wild grouse moors. Might even make the sport more of a sport and less of a guffawing harvest for toffs.

 

[Goatboy]

If it weren't for grouse estates and the likes a lot of the rareish heather and alpine type environments would be turned over to sheep farming and we'd loose them. Heather environments are pretty rare worldwild so do you want to loose that to sheep just to annoy a "posh" person?

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[Ed the Ted]

If it weren't for grouse estates and the likes a lot of the rareish heather and alpine type environments would be turned over to sheep farming and we'd loose them. Heather environments are pretty rare worldwild so do you want to loose that to sheep just to annoy a "posh" person?

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

Sheep? Nah. Heather moor definitely preferable to sheep grazing. Reforestation? Yep.

 

[Swallow]

The man is a contemptible fantasist. I refuse to read his tripe.

Curious. I don't "follow" his column or blog but I've usually found it to be describing things that have already happened, using references and his opinions to be no stonger or whacky that anyone else's.

 

[Andy BB]

I too have Grandparents.

One of my great uncles died from type 1 diabetes...Just before insulin.

My mother nearly died from the same...She was the one of the first children to be put on insulin, and most of those in the ward with her died...the last at 29.

She lived to have me though she died of complications at 54...A combination of luck and more luck.

Luck? Maybe re the lottery of being one of the first insulin receivers. But the real reason she lived was because of the advances in medical science.

The list of illnesses and diseases being "conquered" is absolutely astonishing compared to a century ago. Yet the most common complaint - on here as well as elsewhere - is all about the greedy and grasping pharmaceutical companies for charging vast sums for their medicines, with their huge profit margins. Yet this ignores the horrendous costs of not only research - probably less than 1% of items researched ever make it to the chemists, plus the hundreds of millions it now costs to pass the relevant safety regulations before being given a license.

 

[Ferret75]

Luck? Maybe re the lottery of being one of the first insulin receivers. But the real reason she lived was because of the advances in medical science.

The list of illnesses and diseases being "conquered" is absolutely astonishing compared to a century ago. Yet the most common complaint - on here as well as elsewhere - is all about the greedy and grasping pharmaceutical companies for charging vast sums for their medicines, with their huge profit margins. Yet this ignores the horrendous costs of not only research - probably less than 1% of items researched ever make it to the chemists, plus the hundreds of millions it now costs to pass the relevant safety regulations before being given a license.

Perhaps in the West we need a few more fundamental things before spending money on introducing wolves or lynx, such as common sense, understanding, moderation and taking care of our own bodies would be good start; just some 'old world' wisdom and insight to temper our modern lives. As much as I love the thought of these animals being back in the UK, it would never last long. If we can cull badgers on even the weakest evidence of being a vector for disease, then the unmistakable evidence from a wolf kill would lead to complete local extinctions by farmers and landowners in days.

Nowadays the 'Western epidemic' of diseases from 'modern living' such as diabetes type 2, obesity, heart disease etc... Have very real links to our use of accepted daily luxuries and technology. In fact I've met people who feel they can live sedate and risk laden lifestyles BECAUSE we have this medical safety net! Scary stuff!

Relatively speaking, a very small proportion of our worlds population has access to clean water and even basic medical care, let alone major medical advances and expensive drugs; an even smaller fraction gets free medical care.
I think we have now reached a major knife edge in Western society, medical science is a truly wonderful thing, performing miracles in the way of saving and extending lives; what we are currently struggling with in the UK is following that up with a good quality of life and just as important in my opinion, towards the end, a good quality of death too.



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