Wilderness should be sacrosanct, says Suzuki

Monday August 1, 2011

By Roxanne Stasyszyn

Mike Thomas/Yukon News

Suzuki
David Suzuki speaks during a press conference at the CPAWS office on Friday in Whitehorse.

REVISED

David Suzuki supports protecting the Peel Watershed, even though he admits he knows very little about the region.

“I can’t speak as anyone who knows anything other than what I’ve read about the Peel,” Suzuki said on Friday, noting his eagerness to set out on a two-week paddle of the Hart River with his family. “My excitement about experiencing the Peel is that, increasingly around the world, large, intact wilderness is disappearing.

“In the United States, several years ago, I read that south of the 49th parallel the farthest you can get away from a road is 18 miles. The idea of wilderness, a really large, intact area without roads, is a pretty rare thing in North America today.”

But Suzuki’s admission he knows little of the Scotland-size area of the territory did not undermine his case for its full protection because of two things.

First, Suzuki asserts no such wilderness in the world should be touched anymore.

And second, even the people who are in charge of managing the area know little about it, he said.

“I guarantee you, you could send an entomologist out into the Peel and every day find a new species. We just don’t know anything. So how can anyone talk about managing nature? We don’t have a clue.

“An area like the Peel is a hedge against our ignorance. It’s the one place where we can maybe find out how nature does it. Without that, we’ve got no base at all.”

And allowing even a little bit of development in the area is too much of a compromise, he said.

“There will be an impact that will alter that, even if only 20 per cent is invaded,” he said.

The white, curly hair on top of his head bounced as he vigorously shook his head when asked about allowing roads into the area.

“Roads bring a whole ideology with them,” he said. “Roads are accompanied by all kinds of further intrusions and developments. Roads are a key to the destruction.”

Humanity’s perceptions are screwed up, he said.

Without the vital services nature provides, mankind cannot exist, he said.

“So long as the Yukon government or the BC government or the Canadian government thinks the economy is the highest priority and everything else must be subordinate to that, we’re hooped. It’s just wrong. It’s destructive. We are animals. And as animals, if we don’t have clean air, clean water, clean soil, we’re hooped. Our highest priority is to protect the very life-support systems of the planet. Then we say, ‘Hmm, how do we create an economy, based on protecting those things?’ And that’s the shift that’s needed.”

This insight came clear in Suzuki’s own mind during the early days of The Nature of Things, when he met with the Haida Gwaii First Nation.

The aboriginal group had reached a point of militarization in their fight against logging in their traditional islands off the coast of British Columbia.

Suzuki was told not to patronize their beliefs by saying their description of “Mother Earth” was a nice and poetic metaphor.

It was literal.

They told him without the nature, as their ancestors knew it, they would be just like anyone else.

It was the same relationship described to him years later by indigenous groups in the Amazon and Serengeti.

And on Friday, Suzuki heard the same thing from northern First Nations.

“It’s a sign of hope that somebody with that much experience and that knowledge is coming out to help us preserve something that’s been part of us ever since the beginning of time,” said Wade Vaneltsi, a 19-year-old of the Tetlit Gwitch’in First Nation, one of the four aboriginal groups with land inside the Peel region.

“It clearly shows we’re on the right track, in terms of saving the environment, by keeping the Peel Watershed healthy,” said Chief Eddie Taylor of the Trondek Hwech’in First Nation. “But we knew all along we were on the right track.”

While fielding questions from the audience, Suzuki mentioned he was thinking of doing a television show about the Peel.

Both the Yukon Conservation Society and the territory’s branch of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society are footing the bill for the float planes in and out of the Peel for the Suzuki family. Film crews will accompany them on the trip.

Both the Yukon government and the affected First Nations agreed to work towards a final plan for the northeastern region of the territory by November.

See related story on page 16.

Contact Roxanne Stasyszyn at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Bookmark and Share 10 Comments

6:45pm 08/21/11  |  moosehide wrote:

Get real Suzuki How many green house gases have you burnt up in your motor home and airplane rides over the Yukon and Western Canada. Stay Home

9:11pm 08/06/11  |  Jerry255 wrote:

“I imagine you have a “If It Can’t Be Grown, It Must Be Mined” sticker on the back of your SUV.”

Well if he did he’d not only be promoting truth but also be far less hypocritical than the people with ‘protect the peel’ bumper stickers derived from 100% mined products, shipped using fossil fuels, and slapped on an object entirely made from mining products baring the latex in the tires.

Since I need a few more days before repeating myself yet again please see this link to some comments I left that more or less cover this topic, if not specifically directed at.

http://www.yukon-news.com/opinions/editorial/23818/

Cole’s Notes version of my thoughts: Any object made or manipulated by man is done so using a product of the mining industry and the only reason people have time to complain about the mining industry is because it’s made their lives so easy that they no longer need to focus on surviving and can instead focus on destroying everything that makes our civilization turn.

2:55pm 08/03/11  |  A_yukon_heart wrote:

Post 2 of 2: I believe Mr. Suzuki is not speaking just about protecting the pristine areas of the Yukon, but of the entire world. And for those that might think that he is a ‘crackpot’, I would point out that he is a dedicated scientist that has devoted the greater part of his life to studying and understanding the impacts of human beings on the natural world. He has a PHD in Zoology and was a Professor of genetics for 38 years. His observations are born of deep thought and research. If that makes him a crackpot, what does that make those of us that can’t see past the opening of our wallets. Our world will undoubtedly survive whatever stupidity we try to heap upon it. I can’t say that I am confident that we will.

2:55pm 08/03/11  |  A_yukon_heart wrote:

Post 1 of 2: I believe most people are missing the point of Mr. Suzuki’s comments. It is not about the Yukon versus Alberta, or anywhere else. It is about recognizing that we have accepted the destruction of the natural realm as a necessary and fundamental part of living as human beings on the Earth. It is about accepting that because we have had the ingenuity to create technology throughout our brief history, we repeatedly use that technology (over-the-natural world) before considering the long-term implications of our actions. It is about believing that we are above and beyond the rules that govern the natural world. It is about fooling ourselves into thinking that we are mature enough as a species to understand ‘balance’ - as implied when speaking about development versus environment. It is about the reality that when humans say that we should seek to balance the two we fail to account for human greed, and yes, even the basic idea of survival - as in we need more houses, more mines, more trees, etc. It is about believing that we are so intelligent that we know and understand everything that we need to know to make the right choices - choices that affect not only us, but everyone that comes after. Civilizations have come and gone to dust many times with people believing these same things.

12:25pm 08/03/11  |  redstory wrote:

There is no justifying the Alberta oil sands. I’m not sure how you can mock the word “destroying” in that scenario. That region of northern Alberta will never return to what it used to be.

And the only reason the Peel is even an option right now is because of the price of minerals. Here’s hoping that by the time the decision comes down, all permits are filled and they actually get in there, it won’t be economically viable anymore.

11:59am 08/03/11  |  yukonjack wrote:

Closing the ENTIRE area for development isn’t the answer. Opening up the ENTIRE area for development isn’t the answer either. There must be a balance. There are areas of mining interest, and there are areas of wilderness interest. Sometimes they overlap (as has been discussed in earlier articles), but for the majority of the area, there can be a compromise that everyone can be happy with. And for those saying that we don’t need to mine there at all, let me give you a scenario. If there was an area, say 10 square kilometers, that proved to have more raw crude oil resources than the entire province of Alberta, would it be worth mining? If you say no, how can you justify “destroying” an area over ten times as large, as seen in northern Alberta, for less resources? Because that’s in Alberta and not in the Yukon? Sounds like a lot of NIMBYism to me, and I think that is what this comes down to. Exploit elsewhere, just not here.

10:04am 08/03/11  |  redstory wrote:

@riptide:

“If I had my way, I’d open up the whole thing”

I think we’re all grateful that you’re not the one that is in charge of this decision. I imagine you have a “If It Can’t Be Grown, It Must Be Mined” sticker on the back of your SUV.

Hasty, short-sighted decisions like “opening up the whole thing” are the reason why our planet is in such a crisis.

2:49pm 08/02/11  |  riptide wrote:

No kidding YKJack. This guy is a crackpot. One needs to look at the bigger picture about how we want to live (jobs, resources, etc) vs protecting natural habitat. You can’t protect it all or we all suffer in our everyday lives (jobs, cost of living).

If I had my way, I’d open up the whole thing.

5:18pm 08/01/11  |  yukonjack wrote:

@A_yukon_heart: Technically everything is wilderness, so I suppose we can’t build anymore homes either, right?

“even though he admitted he knows very little about the area”. How can someone who knows nothing about the area endorse its 100% protection?

3:35pm 08/01/11  |  A_yukon_heart wrote:

David Suzuki remains steadfast in his delivery of a message that is so vital to human beings, that we all could and should be exceedingly grateful that he is still standing for Earth. Big business, corporations, and our own willingness to sell out our very survival for the next trinket, or to make a profit, while disregarding how we are intimately connected and reliant on the earth’s environment, is a situation that we should feel great shame for. I saw David Suzuki in Vancouver in 1989. His voice was a clarion call for sanity in our approach to life on this planet. Some have heard and listened, but a great many have not. I agree with David on this point… from this moment forward we should state absolutely that all wilderness areas are to remain untouched. No development, no exploration, no drilling, no mining, no forestry, no more! It is perhaps our only hope and if we as human beings can’t see that, then perhaps we are indeed doomed…

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