The Conservation Phenomenon

The eternal quest for Yeti

The Conservation Phenomenon

Wild Kingdom

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            The local news had an article of a collegiate wildlife society’s focus on conservation. The article described how the organization is set up to give students experience in the wildlife field. Pictures showed smiling students carrying a mule deer trussed up for apparent translocation and a fellow holding a once similarly translocated Germanic immigrant, Cyprinus carpio, or, more commonly known by its unflattering name, carp.

            The article explains how the group ‘manage, conserve, and study wildlife populations and habitats, help restore endangered species, conserve wildlife on public and private land and resolve wildlife damage and disease problems.” Even the most casual observer of conservation must marvel at such an ambitious slate of activities on their modest budget. Their budget relies on a $5,000 contract with NMDGF for taking tissue samples from harvested deer and elk.

            The enthusiasm of the group gleaned from the comments and pictures, though, was reminiscent of scenes witnessed years ago by an equally engaged group of young folks on Grant County’s WNMU campus. It wasn’t deer and common carp they were blindfolding and moving with gusto and anticipation. It was scores of species of mice, rats, bats, snakes, and lizards that would, collectively, give themselves up to appear in specimen archives for permanent record.  There they would hang out pinned to foam backing or curled up in formaldehyde solutions for future eyes to observe or maybe even study.

The collectors, of course, would then retire to the friendly environs of a blazing campfire to drink Buckhorn beer or Rhine wine from bota bags. What work they were doing! The magnitude of such work would not be known for years, but their work was surely the foundation of saving the future, natural world.

            R. Marlin cometh

            Sunday afternoons of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s were always exercises in fending off the blues. Another week of school lingered with deadlines, tests, or dreaded jobs in order to pay for demands related to the tedious reality of survival. The future world of conservation would have to wait for those young, unblemished minds to apply their magic.  Monday loomed.

            Wild Kingdom was a diversion from enduring the blues. Remember Wild Kingdom? It’s sponsor, Mutual of Omaha, would buy tickets for the entourage of that zoologist extraordinaire, R. Marlin Perkins, to go forth into the world and save the planet by finding wild things to capture, truss up, observe, and do something to in order  to accelerate all the saving.

            Marlin would be off riding shotgun in a Land Rover with all the gang hanging on for dear life or obediently trotting along behind in the dust to find something to capture and save. Miraculously, he would find some nearly extinct specimen. With mist nets, boomerangs, snares, Neanderthal pits, and hemp lassos Marlin would direct the natives into position. Invariably, they captured the specimen. He’d narrate the harrowing and near fatal consequences of the process until the organism was safely immobilized. Then, he’d push to the center of the picture and offer epilogue oratory as he once again aided the natural world in saving something hugely important.

            After the final commercial, we’d rejoin the great one back in camp as he sipped and wafted vomeronasal essence from a Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1959 awaiting dinner of Syncerus caffer a la Forestiere prepared exquisitely by bush country chefs and presented on white linens, fine china, and silver. If only we didn’t have to worry about cheap beer and tedious living expenses we could save the world, too … that day would come!

            The hunt for Yeti

            Marlin Perkins was a dropout from the University of Missouri who started a career as a self proclaimed zoologist as a laborer at the St. Louis Zoo.  Given credit where credit is due, R. Marlin worked his way up and became head zoo keep. His penchant for seeking smiling poses alongside bound animals got him on local TV and he began his preferred career as a play by play guy on animal behavior on air waves of Chicago and the upper Midwest.

            In 1960, he wangled his way into the entourage of that scaler of grand heights, Sir Edmund Hillary. Hillary set out to rekindle fame by capturing Yeti, the abominable snowman, in the snowman’s native environs of the Himalayas. Despite the failure to snare Yeti, Perkins was off running to broader audiences.

            The Yeti experience, though, set the tone for his career, and, I believe, much manipulated visions of conservation. Yeti was the consummate endangered species. Primeval, powerful, and smart enough to evade capture by mankind, Yeti was the natural protagonist that set the backdrop for global conservative efforts.

            He was observed around the world. He existed successfully, albeit in critically short numbers, in the destructive path of mankind. His success came from his superior intellect to endure, without trace, within the ravages of civilization. In him was hope for the natural world. He was the endangered, endangered species and only those humans who had telepathic connections to his existence shared similar parallel, omnipotent journeys.

 R. Marlin was one of the chosen and his life and his quest for natural salvation was the model to emulate … replete with native bearers of china, linen, and silver.

            The hunt for the proxy of Canis lupus

            The collegiate wildlife society submitted they were contributing to the recovery of the Mexican gray wolf, monitoring cranes in the Bernardo Wildlife Area, and going on hikes to take home conservation awards. Hopefully, a few of them might eventually become grounded in reality.

            There is more to conservation management than trussing up some living organism and hauling him somewhere he doesn’t know and turning him loose to fend for himself. That isn’t satisfying to those who actually understand the implications. It is horrifying. Real conservationism is more than joyfully engaging in the hunt for Yeti and returning to the confines and safety of howling crowds, cheap beer and a Bota bag of wine with or without china, linen, and silver.

            Real conservation equates to the security of meaningful inputs. Adequate food supplies, water, minerals, seasonal or prescriptive protection, and system balance within the framework of those who can actually provide those basics are what really matters. It isn’t what you want. The outcome is a matter of what you can manage reasonably and substantively.

            Regardless of how it is presented, conservation isn’t a group spectator sport. Perkins was a showman not a steward of any natural system. His legacy, however, contributed to the increasingly abstract view of managing wild systems. The repetition of the message has reinforced a sense of empowerment to join the cause to save something. It has become a business … an industry.

            It doesn’t matter that the success rate of the approach is abysmal. What matters is that many people now make their living saving things from safe distances. What they share with Marlin Perkins is their preference for china, linen, and silver. It is hypocrisy of grand proportions, and … it relies on your dime for existence.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Snake oil is … snake oil.”